Microplastics

Plastics deserve a special focus when considering ocean pollutants for several reasons. First of all, they are low cost, and easy to manufacture.  This makes them pervasive throughout the world and our oceans, especially with the economically emerging coastal countries. Because they are neither generally considered to be high value or durable, they are frequently thrown away. Worse, their most frequent use, 39.5% to be exact, is as packaging. This means that much of worldwide plastic volume is not important to the end use product and is meant to be discarded. The worldwide volumes of plastics are growing rapidly as industrialization and globalization standardize consumer goods across the globe.  Once in the ocean plastics can break down over time, turning even largest plastic items into microplastics. The impact of these micro-plastics is poorly understood, but it is generally believed to have many detrimental impacts on marine ecosystems.

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Plastic is nothing more than petroleum that has been manipulated on the molecular level into being a solid.   While few people would pour a cup of oil into any body of water, many will throw a piece of plastic into it without even thinking twice about it. That piece of plastic will ultimately find its way downstream, by way of rivers and other waterways and eventually end up in the ocean. 

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Plastics in the ocean are merely an oil spill by another name.

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It is difficult to know, or even guess, how much plastic is in the environment.  Approximately half of plastics are buoyant, but extrapolation from surface observations tends to substantially underestimate the total due to the long and highly variable life of plastics.  Further, as it does decay, it breaks down into tiny particles, called micro-plastics, which are nearly invisible to all but the most careful survey.