|Law Lavender, K., Moret-Férguson, S., Maximenko, N.A., Proskurowski, G., Peacock, E.E., Hafner, J.H., Reddy, C.M., Plastic Accumulation in the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, Science, 3 September 2010, Vol. 329 no. 5996 pp. 1185-1188 |
Plastic marine pollution is a major environmental concern, yet a quantitative description of the scope of this problem in the open ocean is lacking. Here, we present a time series of plastic content at the surface of the western North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea from 1986 to 2008. More than 60% of 6136 surface plankton net tows collected buoyant plastic pieces, typically millimeters in size. The highest concentration of plastic debris was observed in subtropical latitudes and associated with the observed large-scale convergence in surface currents predicted by Ekman dynamics. Despite a rapid increase in plastic production and disposal during this time period, no trend in plastic concentration was observed in the region of highest accumulation.