#plastic marine debris
Ateenage diver found tons of golf ball accumulating on the seafloor off Pebble Beach, near Carmel, California, a beach very close a Golf Club.
She, we the helpt of an expert, and volunters, removed 39,602 golf balls from intertidal and nearshore environments near Carmel, California, and combined with concurrent cleanup efforts, they report the retrieval of 50,681 balls, approximately 2.5 tons of debris.
- A harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) swimming near a dense aggregation of golf balls, and a threatened southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) handles a golf ball.
According to authors of the study, golf ball pollution is likely an underreported problem associated with coastal courses worldwide. Nearshore marine environments in close proximity to golf courses may similarly accumulate debris and should be surveyed to develop context-dependent mitigation strategies. Marine plastic pollution is a diffuse and seemingly intractable global problem, but the identification and remediation of known point sources of pollution is a tangible step in reducing the deleterious impacts of anthropogenic activity on marine systems
- Photo: Several examples of dense aggregations of hundreds of golf balls encountered in the nearshore environment at the Pebble Beach study site.
- Reference: Kewer et al., 2019. Quantifying marine debris associated with coastal golf courses Marine Pollution Bulletin.
[Photo description: dense aggregations of golf balls]
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Aplastic ice bag, likely blown overboard from a fishing vessel found at a depth of ~3,700 m in Enigma Seamount, near the Mariana Trench
- Photograph: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, 2016 Deepwater Exploration of the Marianas.
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Litter is present in all marine waters around the globe. It consists of several compound classes of which plastic is of special interest because of its high abundance and possible threat to marine organisms.
Distribution, composition and abundance of large litter items at the sea floor of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea was investigated based on 175 bottom trawls between 2013 and 2015. In the North Sea and in the Baltic Sea plastic represented 80% of the litter items.
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Plastic pollution is found in all oceans. Now we have photographic evidence showing benthic pollution in remote areas such is Arctic.
The accumulation of plastic in the Arctic region is almost certainly not caused by local populations. Marine litter, mayority compound by plastic, it’s carried in from distant regions by currents in the Atlantic Ocean. According to Melanie Bergmann, whom took these pictures, every time finds more litter items on the Arctic seafloor: pieces of a beer bottle, string, glass, fisheries net, a plastic bag and bits of plastic.
Arctic plastic is small, fragmentend, weathered and aged, indicating that it had been traveling the seas for decades, fragmenting into smaller and smaller pieces along the way. Detailed image analysis indicate the trend is still on the increase!
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During a visual exploration in the north-western Mediterranea using remote operated vehicles (ROVs) a noticeable level of anthropogenic impact was observed in all studied zones,with 158 recorded artificial objects of various types detected.
Different types of anthropogenic impacts observed:
(A) Litter
(B) Trawl marks
© Longlines
(D) Fishing net.
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Examples of benthic debris items observed from the Delta submersible during deep-water surveys on the seafloor off central and southern California:
a) monofilament fishing line in gorgonian corals off central California at 95 m (photo by M. Yoklavich).
b) gill net snagged on rock off southern California at 80 m (photo by D. Schroeder).
c) beer bottle with shortspine combfish off southern California at 182 m (photo by L. Snook).
d) derelict spot prawn trap continuing to capture crabs off southern California at 247 m (photo by M. Love)
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