{"id":11533,"date":"2020-11-10T09:30:36","date_gmt":"2020-11-10T06:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africasustainabilitymatters.com\/?p=11533"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:31:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:31:19","slug":"almost-16-million-tons-of-microplastic-are-embedded-in-the-seafloor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/2020\/11\/10\/almost-16-million-tons-of-microplastic-are-embedded-in-the-seafloor\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost 16 Million Tons of Microplastic Are Embedded In The Seafloor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Plastic waste is a visibly growing problem for the environment, especially the ocean. Debris can be seen scattered across shorelines of once-pristine beaches, a sign of how much is making its way into the seas. Over time, the plastic degrades and breaks apart into\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/amp\/eat-drink-inhale-microplastics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">microplastics<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 fragments about the size of a grain of rice \u2013 which can easily be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/amp\/microplastic-eating-fish-become-more-daring-and-die-younger\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">consumed by sea creatures<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A new&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fmars.2020.576170\/abstract\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">study<\/a>&nbsp;by Australia\u2019s national science agency CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization) shows that the number of fragments floating on the surface is nothing compared to how many are embedded in the seafloor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The researchers analyzed core samples and found that\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.csiro.au\/en\/News\/News-releases\/2020\/14-million-tonnes-of-microplastics-on-seafloor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">9.25 million to 15.87 million tons of microplastics<\/a>\u00a0are embedded on the seafloor. That\u2019s the equivalent of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2020\/10\/7\/study-finds-14-million-tonnes-of-microplastics-on-seafloor\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">18 to 24 shopping bags full<\/a>\u00a0of plastic fragments for every foot of coastline worldwide (except Antarctica). The team says their research is the first-ever global estimate for microplastics on the seafloor and it\u2019s more than double the estimate of what\u2019s on the surface. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.intelligentliving.co\/amp\/16-million-tons-of-microplastic-seafloor\">Read more&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Plastic waste is a visibly growing problem for the environment, especially the ocean. Debris can be seen scattered across shorelines of once-pristine beaches, a sign of how much is making&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":11534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11533"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11533\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rayscohosting.best\/ASM\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}