Plastic bags have reached the deepest underwater canyons

At the bottom of seas from the continental shelf to the deepest depressions, there was not the 1st section, every way got the garbage generated by human civilization.

The conclusion made by scientists, after reviewing 588 videos taken automatic underwater devices. In the first place on the seabed found plastic bags, described in the journal PLoS One.

Scientists did not conduct special studies, and took up the work of geologists and oceanographers. Their underwater cameras and submersibles visited all the seas that surround the European continent, from Northern Norway to the Canary Islands, from mountain ranges East Atlantic to Crete.

"First of all we met plastic, for a start packages, but among other pieces of plastic buckets. We noticed at the bottom of the battery, part of the fuselage barrel for oil products, shoes, chairs, bottles, but most of all there plastic," says the Creator of the article Christopher FEM (Christopher Pham), the employee of University of the Azores, in his interview with Planet Earth Online.

Debris was strewn not only coastal areas (Gare de Lyon and the bays of Biscay), but also such "bear corners"as transform the Charlie Gibbs fracture, located on the border of North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, at a distance of 2000 km from the land. At the bottom of this fault, one of the deepest in the Atlantic, scientists saw piles of garbage.

Most of the waste found in underwater valleys. In hills and the shore of garbage less, but having said that there are often found discarded fishing gear. They are made of extremely strong plastic and therefore very reliable in data network catches not only fish and shellfish, and other debris - it formed a real floating musoroprovod". Finally, on the slopes of seamounts and hollows were discovered deposits of slag (baked in ashes from combustion of coal), which threw off the sea, the sailors of the ships that sailed the oceans in the XIX-early XX century.

But the worst of the scientist concerned about plastic bags. Contrary to popular belief, they do not float on the water surface, and fall into the deep, and accumulate in the deepest canyons. Decomposing into tiny fragments, they get into the organisms of detritophages, and through them to other "floors" of the food chain, almost to big fish and shellfish, which people use in a meal.

sections: Society, World News