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14 million tonnes of plastic on sea floor

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Scientists have found evidence that there is an estimated 14million tonnes of plastic at the bottom of the ocean

Latest evidence shows that there is thirty times more plastic on ocean floor than surface.

Scientist studied ocean sediments from as deep as 3km. what they found was huge amounts of plastic which has sunk.

Australia’s government science agency, CSIRO, gathered samples from the ocean floor at six remote sites about 300km off the country’s southern coast.

Researchers looked at 51 samples and found that after excluding the weight of the water, each gram of sediment contained an average of 1.26 microplastic pieces.

Microplastics are 5mm or less in diameter and are mostly the result of larger plastic items breaking apart into ever smaller pieces.

The cores were drilled in March and April 2017 between 288km and 349km from the coast, at depths of between 1,655 metres and 3,016 metres.

Hardesty said it wasn’t possible to know how old the pieces of plastic were, or what sort of object they had once been part of.

But she said the shape of the pieces under a microscope suggested they were once consumer items.

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