Type
ArticleAuthors
Cozar, AndresEchevarría, Fidel

Gonzaĺez-Gordillo, Juan Ignácio
Irigoien, Xabier

Úbeda, Bárbara
Hernandez-Leon, Santiago
Palma, Álvaro T.
Navarro, Sandra
García-de-Lomas, Juan

Ruiz, Andrea
Fernández De Puelles, Ma Luz
Duarte, Carlos M.

KAUST Department
Red Sea Research Center (RSRC)Biological and Environmental Sciences and Engineering (BESE) Division
Marine Science Program
Plankton ecology Research Group
Date
2014-06-30Online Publication Date
2014-06-30Print Publication Date
2014-07-15Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/563613
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
There is a rising concern regarding the accumulation of floating plastic debris in the open ocean. However, the magnitude and the fate of this pollution are still open questions. Using data from the Malaspina 2010 circumnavigation, regional surveys, and previously published reports, we show a worldwide distribution of plastic on the surface of the open ocean, mostly accumulating in the convergence zones of each of the five subtropical gyres with comparable density. However, the global load of plastic on the open ocean surface was estimated to be on the order of tens of thousands of tons, far less than expected. Our observations of the size distribution of floating plastic debris point at important size-selective sinks removing millimeter-sized fragments of floating plastic on a large scale. This sink may involve a combination of fast nano-fragmentation of the microplastic into particles of microns or smaller, their transference to the ocean interior by food webs and ballasting processes, and processes yet to be discovered. Resolving the fate of the missing plastic debris is of fundamental importance to determine the nature and significance of the impacts of plastic pollution in the ocean.Citation
Cozar, A., Echevarria, F., Gonzalez-Gordillo, J. I., Irigoien, X., Ubeda, B., Hernandez-Leon, S., … Duarte, C. M. (2014). Plastic debris in the open ocean. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(28), 10239–10244. doi:10.1073/pnas.1314705111Sponsors
We thank Pakea Bizkaia and the Chilean Navy, which contributed to the sample collection, and K. L. Law, M. C. Goldstein, M. J. Doyle, M. Eriksen, J. Reisser, and their collaborators for their available data. We also thank S. Loiselle and J. Ruiz for his useful suggestions in writing the paper. This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Malaspina 2010 expedition project (Consolider-Ingenio 2010, CSD2008-00077) and the Migrants and Active Flux in the Atlantic Ocean project (CTM2012-39587-C04-01). Original data reported in this paper are freely available at http://metamalaspina.imedea.uib-csic.es/geonetwork. This is Campus de Excelencia Internacional del Mar (CEIMAR) Publication 58.PubMed ID
24982135PubMed Central ID
PMC4104848Additional Links
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104848ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1073/pnas.1314705111
Scopus Count
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