Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea

Eriksen M, Lebreton LCM, Carson HS, Thiel M, Moore CJ, Borerro JC, et al. (2014) Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea. PLoS ONE 9(12): e111913. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0111913

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913

Marcus Eriksen , Laurent C. M. Lebreton, Henry S. Carson, Martin Thiel, Charles J. Moore, Jose C. Borerro, Francois Galgani, Peter G. Ryan, Julia Reisser are all the researcher that produced the study “Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea.”   Their research question was to figure out more information about the plastic pollution in the marine environment because there is a huge lack of data mostly in the Southern Hemisphere.  Their topic of ocean plastic pollution is a not widely researched.  The type of data that they would need is observational data of acts, reports, and behaviors.  They would need to evaluate the area and go on expeditions.  They went on 24 expeditions across all five sub-tropical gyres.  They used surface net tows to get the plastic, as well as visual survey transects of plastic debris.  Various other models were used to collect data.  They used mathematical calculations to estimate the proper amount of plastic that is in the ocean to fix the wind driven mixing correcting too.  Based on their findings, analytical data, and model results they calculated that there are at least 5.25 trillion plastic particles floating in the sea.  The plastic is carried by prevailing winds and surface currents.  I believe that they preformed a massive amount of research for this study.  Traveling to all five gyres is a lot of work.  They performed in-depth analysis of their findings and used different forms of models to get the most accurate results.  I found their research extremely interesting.