In fact, this is not the first time that the expedition team has found plastic products in the deep sea, but this time the location of the discovery is unbelievable - it is the Mariana Trench.
Such a complete "plastic corpse" is really rare, because most of the plastic will basically degrade into microplastics in the deep sea. Among the seabeds that have been discovered by mankind, the Mariana Trench is the deepest, and since plastic waste can be found here, it is conceivable that our current marine pollution problem has become extremely serious.
Mariana Trench
The Mariana Trench is located in the northeast of the Philippines, near the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near the Mariana Islands, roughly in the area enclosed by Iwo Huang Dao and Yap Island. According to research, this trench has been formed for nearly 60 million years.
The deepest part of the trench is 6 to 11 kilometers, and this is the deepest trench that humans have found so far. The environment here is also second to none in the earth realm. The high-pressure, low-temperature, low-oxygen environment and the lack of food resources have led people to believe that there can be no life here. But things are always unexpected, and researchers here not only meet tenacious living individuals, but also discover new species.
Modern scholars generally believe that the Mariana Trench was formed by the collision of oceanic and terrestrial plates. Due to the density and low position of the marine plate, when colliding with the land plate, the mantle is subducted into the mantle in the land plate, and the asthenosphere temperature in the mantle reaches 700 ~ 1300 ° C, the pressure of this part of the space is very large, in this high temperature and high pressure environment, the marine plate inserted into the mantle begins to gradually melt and disappear, and this gap is the so-called trench.
How did the plastic waste found in the Mariana Trench get in?
In addition to the organized planning of human household garbage into the ocean for landfilling, there are also some unscrupulous businesses and individual groups that maliciously discharge and drop garbage into the ocean, and the garbage that is discarded on the street may also enter the ocean. These plastic products can enter the drainage network or rivers and lakes through wind and rain, and then flow into the sea.
The quality of ordinary plastic products is relatively light, such as plastic shopping bags, the outer packaging of various small objects, the protective film inside the goods, etc., when they reach the ocean, they will first float on the surface of the sea without directly sinking. With the accumulation of time, the feces and body mucus of large and small organisms in different places at different times will gradually adhere to the surface of plastic garbage, and when the weight is greater than buoyancy, these garbage will gradually sink.
For plastic bottles and plastic cans, if they are well sealed, they can only go with the flow on the surface of the ocean, if there is a gas leakage phenomenon in the process of drifting, some will sink, and the light mass will need to be accumulated for a period of time as mentioned above.
The surface of the ocean is exposed to the sun for a long time, the radiation of the sun and the erosion of seawater, the high pressure in the deep sea creates a harsh environment for the plastics soaked in it for a long time, and the plastic in this state will accelerate the degradation rate, generally degraded into very small microplastics, of which the size of less than 5mm of granular plastics We gave him a name - microplastics.
According to relevant studies, these microplastics will be adsorbed in the respiratory tract of marine organisms due to their small size and have been in various organ tissues, and after long-term accumulation, they will have irreversible harm to their physical health, and even cause these poor marine organisms to die.
It is estimated that as many as 2.41 million tons of plastic enter the ocean every year; some tourists who do not pay attention to their personal behavior will throw their own garbage on the beach, which directly leads to the entry of garbage into the ocean, and more ironically, since the 1950s, we have produced plastic the weight of 1 billion elephants. With so many numbers and so much human activity, it's not hard to explain the sight of plastic in the Mariana Trench.
The global problem of marine pollution is becoming increasingly prominent
In 1971, the Executive Board of THE IOC of UNESCO adopted the "Comprehensive Plan for Global Research on Marine Environmental Pollution", which requires member states or regional research organizations to jointly undertake local marine pollution surveys and tests to provide a reliable basis for future evaluation and control of marine pollution.
However, survey data in recent years show that the problem of marine pollution is getting worse, and the data predict that this state of affairs will continue and rise slowly.
More and more scientific research institutions have successively discovered deformed frogs, deformed fish and other aquatic organisms in the ocean, which is caused by the large amount of chemicals contained in seawater. During the growth and development of aquatic organisms such as fish, the division of embryonic cells is stimulated by some physical or chemical stimuli to produce abnormal division, which may lead to adult malformations.
Turtles have a deep crack in their necks due to years of entanglement in hemp ropes, and finally die from local skin infections; when scientific expeditions collect samples from unexplored archipelagos, they can see piles of artificial garbage gathered due to the impact of the sea in the corner of the reef; fishermen's fishing nets sometimes even more than 30% of the weight is from marine garbage... These shocking images truly reflect the extremely serious extent of the problem of marine pollution.
At the same time as human civilization developed rapidly, artificial garbage began to enter the ocean in large batches. Although our traditional waste treatment methods include sanitary landfill, incineration to generate electricity, pyrolysis and gasification, etc., it is still impossible to stop people from throwing garbage into the ocean. In addition to deliberate releases, a large number of oil tankers are leaked into the ocean every year due to improper transportation. The 2011 Fukushima nuclear power plant leak in Japan has dealt a heavy blow to the ocean, including this year's nuclear sewage discharge in Japan, which has also brought great threats to the marine ecology.
According to the data of recent years, people's daily life and industrial production of plastic dependence is increasing, plastic waste in the next few years the output will continue to increase, which requires the government to strengthen management in garbage disposal, individual citizens actively cooperate, marine pollution problems are not individuals and a country can decide, we all mankind to bear and properly solve. None of us want the Mariana Trench, which is not yet fully understood by humans, to be littered with plastic waste.