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<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Plastic
debris that was thought to be trapped in vast floating patches in the Pacific
Ocean may be able to escape and<span class=apple-converted-space><span
style='color:#4D4D4D'> </span></span><a
href="http://www.scidev.net/global/environment/pollution/"><span
style='color:#E10000'>pollute</span></a><span class=apple-converted-space><span
style='color:#4D4D4D'> </span></span>islands and coastal areas, a study
warns.<strong><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";font-weight:normal'><o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><strong><span style='font-size:18.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Plastic
debris can escape Pacific ‘garbage patch’</span></strong><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.scidev.net/global/author.tania-rabesandratana.html"><span
style='font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";color:windowtext;text-decoration:
none'><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><a
href="http://www.scidev.net/global/author.tania-rabesandratana.html"><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'>Tania Rabesandratana</span><span
style='color:windowtext;text-decoration:none'><o:p></o:p></span></a></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>14/06/16</span><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>http://www.scidev.net/global/pollution/news/plastic-debris-pacific-garbage-patch.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=SciDevNewsletter&utm_campaign=international%20SciDev.Net%20update%3A%2020%20June%202016<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:13.5pt'><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
color:#4D4D4D'><br>
<br>
</span><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#4D4D4D'>These great
patches of rubbish — sometimes inaccurately called plastic islands or
continents — could partly break up due to short-lived, hard-to-observe
eddies, the paper finds. Such rubbish had been thought to be permanently
trapped in the middle of the Pacific. <br>
<br>
“We used to think that [debris] converged in the centre and went round in
circles, and now we’ve shown that there are small escape routes,”
says lead author Christophe Maes, an oceanographer at the Research Institute
for Development in France. He says the finding could help design strategies to
collect marine rubbish that threatens marine wildlife.<br>
<br>
To obtain these results, Maes’s team relied on computer models with a
resolution as fine as three kilometres, compared with the 50- or 100-kilometre resolution
of models commonly used to study<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://www.scidev.net/global/environment/climate-change/"><span
style='color:#E10000'>climate change</span></a>.<br>
<br>
The<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2016GL068217/abstract"><span
style='color:#E10000'>study</span></a>, published in<span
class=apple-converted-space> </span><em><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Geophysical
Research Letters</span></em><span class=apple-converted-space><i> </i></span>in
April, provides a first, exciting confirmation that ‘garbage
patches’ are not a “black hole” for plastic debris, says Erik
van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London, United Kingdom, who
was not involved in the analysis.<br>
<br>
The ocean is “much more turbulent than we thought. We need to simulate
that turbulence and for that we need a very fine resolution,” he
explains.<br>
<br>
There are at least five great ‘convergence zones’ where plastic
accumulates: the North and South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, and the
Indian Ocean.<br>
<br>
Because the study focused on the Pacific, the results cannot necessarily be
extrapolated to other oceans, says Maes. “But there are good chances that
there are escape ways in the other ocean gyres,” he warns.<br>
<br>
The study also matches observations on the ground. Last year for example,
Chilean scientists<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.05.021"><span
style='color:#E10000'>reported</span></a><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>abundant
plastic litter on coasts that aligned with a higher proportion of plastics
further out sea, rather than waste dumped in coastal waters.<br>
<br>
“Even in the middle of the ocean, plastic can come back to haunt
us,” says van Sebille.<br>
<br>
An ambitious project called the<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://www.theoceancleanup.com/about.html"><span style='color:#E10000'>Ocean
Cleanup</span></a><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>aims to build
floating barriers to collect and extract marine plastic, claiming that “a
single 100 kilometre-long clean-up array could remove 42 per cent of the Great
Pacific Garbage Patch” over ten years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:13.5pt'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#4D4D4D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:13.5pt'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#4D4D4D'>But “you need to know the ocean’s small-scale
structures to envisage large-scale [debris] collection”, Maes says.<br>
<br>
If plastic debris leaves accumulation zones, it may be more efficient to
collect it on coastlines rather than out at sea, van Sebille adds.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:13.5pt'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#4D4D4D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<h3 style='margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height:15.75pt'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#4D4D4D'>References<o:p></o:p></span></h3>
<p class=MsoNormal style='line-height:13.5pt'><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";
color:#4D4D4D'>Christophe Maes and others<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2016GL068217"><span style='color:#E10000'>Origin
and fate of surface drift in the oceanic convergence zones of the eastern
Pacific</span></a><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>(<em><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Geophysical Research Letters</span></em>,
6 April 2016)<br>
Diego Miranda-Urbina and others<span class=apple-converted-space> </span><a
href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2015.05.021"><span
style='color:#E10000'>Litter and seabirds found across a longitudinal gradient
in the South Pacific Ocean</span></a><span class=apple-converted-space> </span>(<em><span
style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'>Marine Pollution Bulletin</span></em>,
15 July 2015)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"'><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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