Scientists believe plastic pollution may be changing the colour of part of the Pacific Ocean, making the water look bluer and greener than it used to.
The area in question is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge swirl of rubbish floating in the ocean between Hawaii and California. Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway studied 20 years of satellite data, from 2002 to 2022, and found the water had brightened compared with the ocean around it.
The likely cause is microplastics — tiny bits of plastic, many too small to see with the naked eye, broken down from things like old fishing nets and food packaging. Scientists think as much as 13 million tonnes of plastic enters the ocean every year, yet only a small fraction of that is ever found floating on the surface, a mystery known as the “missing plastic paradox”.
Study author Shea Cheatham, a PhD candidate at the University of Bergen, said the team could link a very specific colour of light to microplastics. “We were able to say that we have this specific spectrum of light, this colour that microplastics tend to produce,” Cheatham said.
Marine biology professor Richard Thompson, from the University of Plymouth in England, who was not involved in the study, said satellites could offer a faster, cheaper way to track plastic pollution than counting rubbish by hand.
Scientists say more research is needed before they can be completely sure plastic is the cause, but the discovery could help track ocean pollution from space in the future.
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