Archive

To say that there has been some controversy over the recent Netflix production Seaspiracy would be like suggesting the ocean is a little moist. Billed as an investigative documentary into a global conspiracy of organisations that downplays, ignores or even supports the negative impacts that the fishing industry has on the world’s oceans, the film by director […]

A new report from the Marine Megafauna Foundation highlights the impact that marine microplastics are having on large filter-feeders such as manta rays and whale sharks. Large filter-feeders swallow thousands of cubic meters of plankton-filled water every day as they feed, and with it, the tiny particles known as microplastics that result from the breakdown […]

Plastic concentrations are as high as the Pacific Garbage Patch in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary Monterey Bay has a reputation as one of America’s most pristine ocean environments: It’s a national marine sanctuary and far away from heavy industry. But a groundbreaking study published Thursday has found levels of plastic pollution in the water […]

A new survey of remote islands off the coast of Australia found mountains of plastic weighing as much as a blue whale. “Welcome to paradise,” beckons the Cocos Keeling Islands’ Visitor Center. The island chain is popular with vacationing Australians, and it’s easy to see why. Photos from the chain of 27 islands, of which only two […]

By David Jones Volunteers from all over the world are taking part in a citizen science project to help scientists work out how bad microplastic pollution really is. Plastic pollution has become pervasive, pernicious and persistent. In 2016, global plastic production was around 335m tonnes and it continues to be released into our rivers and oceans on […]

WORLDWIDE, PLASTIC CONSUMPTION has reached over 320 tons per year. Most of the plastics produced are of a one-time use nature and is rapidly added to burgeoning landfills or disposed of as litter. A smaller portion is either recycled or incinerated (which has its own set of problems). The plastics that are introduced into the […]

The Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch non-profit organization, this week launched a $20 million system in the San Francisco Bay which is the first large-scale attempt to rid the oceans of plastic. System 001 is being towed 450km (240 nautical miles) offshore for a two-week trial before continuing its journey toward the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, 2,200km […]

All over the world, sea turtles are swallowing bits of plastic floating in the ocean, mistaking them for tasty jellyfish, or just unable to avoid the debris that surrounds them. Now, a new study out of Australia is trying to catalog the damage. While some sea turtles have been found to have swallowed hundreds of […]

From getting stuck in nets to eating plastic that they think is food, creatures worldwide are dying from material we made. BY NATASHA DALY Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. On a boat off Costa Rica, a biologist uses pliers from a Swiss army knife to try to extract a plastic straw from […]

There often are tiny bits of plastic in the fish and shellfish we eat. Scientists are racing to figure out what that means for our health. BY ELIZABETH ROYTE Read this story and more in the June 2018 issue of National Geographic magazine. In a laboratory at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in Palisades, New York, Debra Lee Magadini positions […]