Go to content
  • cecnewsNews
  • cecPublicationsPublications
  • cecResearchResearch
  • cecInfrastructureInfrastructure
  • cecCruiseCruise logs
  • cecsitemapAbout

CAGE (2013-2023) has ended. To view our reports, publications, and database, please visit the CAGE Report Series website.

Alt Text! Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate,
Environment and Climate

Open menu

Plastic trash is everywhere. Also on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Photo: ROV Ægir

Picking up plastic trash

According to a study from 2015 1, between 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean per year. Everyone has already heard about the “plastic continent” of macro- but mostly microplastic swirling in the world’s gyres. But, everything is connected.

Text: Marie Stetzler

The ocean currents are a huge two-lane-highway around the globe with the water’s salinity and temperature gradients as the main motor of transport: surface currents hence stream in a different (mostly opposite) direction than deep-sea currents. And like on a proper highway, there are plenty of exits, branching out in complex, always thinner paths, leading the currents to the most remote places. That plastic would also end up in the Arctic, transported by the West Spitsbergen Current, was just a matter of time.

Still, it is a bitter reality-check when the lights of our underwater robot the ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) laid down on a white plastic bottle. And this at 353m depths and 80° N, miles away from the next soul, and even hundreds from the closest settlement. Our environmental consciousness forbidding us to leave this piece of trash behind, we pick it up with the ROV’s pliers. But even for a piece of plastic scientific interest can be found: the “fouling”, so micro- and macroorganisms which inevitably settle on all submerged surfaces after a while, are worth investigating.

Plastic is a light material, nevertheless, most of it won’t float on the ocean’s surface. It is the weight of the fouling that will drag it down to the bottom of the ocean, as will currents. Around 80% of the plastic in our seas is therefore lying on the ground 2. In absence of light, oxygen, and weathering, it won’t be degraded and can remain there, preserved for centuries, eventually becoming a new habitat for organisms. Not the nicest trace left behind by humankind, but at least this white bottle won’t go down in the geological records of the Anthropocene.

 

 

1 Jambeck,J.R., Geyer,R., Wilcox,C., Siegler,T.R., Perryman,M., Andrady,A. ,Narayan, R.,
Law,K.L. (2015) Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science. 347, 6223, 768–771.

 

2 François Galgani, French research scientist about ocean plastic at IFREMER. Personal
communication.

11. November 2020

Cruise blog, ROV cruise 80 degrees North

Contact

Maja Sojtaric

Senior communications advisor
+47 77 62 52 40
maja.sojtaric@uit.no

Maja Sojtaric

Maja is the senior communcations advisor for CAGE.

Read more about Maja Sojtaric

18. November 2020

Greenland in the Dark

10. November 2020

“Have you not succeeded? Continue! Have you succeeded? Continue!” – Fridtjof Nansen

News archive

CAGE, Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate

  • Research areas
  • People
  • Job openings
  • About us
  • News Archive
  • Privacy Policy
  • Home

cage@ig.uit.no

Facebook

Twitter

 

Naturfagbygget
Dramsveien 201
9010 Tromsø

 

Go to map

NGU_hovedlogo_svart_full_engelsk
sfflogonegEng_svart
  • 2023 © CAGE, Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate – UiT The Arctic University of Norway
  • Privacy Policy
  • Design and development: Gnist Design

CAGE, Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate,
Environment and Climate

Close menu
  • cecnewsNews
  • cecPublicationsPublications
  • cecResearchResearch
  • cecInfrastructureInfrastructure
  • cecCruiseCruise logs
  • cecsitemapAbout
    • Annual Reports
    • Centre Board
    • Scientific Advisory Committee
    • Research School
    • Past Events/PhD Defenses
    • Employees
    • Job openings