The Ocean's Foul, Plastic Garbage Has Finally Reached the Arctic

It’s estimated there are at least 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic fouling up the oceans, not to mention inland floating garbage dumps like the Great Lakes. Now plastic litter has invaded the remote waters of the Arctic, as well.

Researchers spotted large pieces of garbage on the ocean surface in the Barents Sea and Fram Strait, both east of Greenland, according to a paper published online this week in the journal Polar Biology. Tagging along with an icebreaker over a distance of 3,479 miles in 2012, the researchers noted 31 pieces of litter. That may sound low until you realize they’re searching from way up on the ship’s bridge and in a helicopter. Plastic breaks down in the sea into what some deem a “soup”—tiny particles, readily consumed by fish and other organisms, that are best detected using micromesh nets.