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FTA : >>> Vescovo spent three hours at the bottom, and saw a plastic bag through the viewports. In the Puerto Rico Trench, one of the Limiting Factor’s cameras
by wiz21c 6y ago
FTA :
>>> Vescovo spent three hours at the bottom, and saw a plastic bag through the viewports. In the Puerto Rico Trench, one of the Limiting Factor’s cameras had captured an image of a soda can. Scientists estimate that in thirty years the oceans will hold a greater mass of plastic than of fish. Almost every biological sample that Jamieson has dredged up from the hadal zone and tested in a lab has been contaminated with microplastics. “Does it harm the ability of these animals to feed, to maneuver, to reproduce?” McCallum said. “We don’t know, because we can’t compare one that’s full of microplastics with one that’s not. Because there aren’t any.”
A great achievement, a pitiful conclusion.
- mirimir 6y agoThere's an analogous horizontal phenomenon. Just as the deep oceans are gravitational sinks, the poles are thermal sinks. Cold traps. And so concentrations of persistent atmospheric pollutants are substantially higher there. So it goes.
- darkerside 6y agoDo solar winds do anything to strip these pollutants away?
- at_a_remove 6y agoI would not think so. Most of these pollutants are "heavy" and solar winds are only appropriate for the less dense molecules, unfortunately.
- mirimir 6y agoSorry, I neglected to say that they get deposited through precipitation, and incorporated into ecosystems. As I recall, this is mostly about persistent lipophilic organics, some of which are endocrine disruptors. Concentrations are amazingly high in humans (north) and wildlife (north and south). See http://www.educapoles.org/assets/uploads/teaching_dossiers_files/edd_20_en.pdf http://www.educapoles.org/assets/uploads/teaching_dossiers_f...