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The ocean is a global common, so negative externalities of marine debris are not usually experienced by the producer. In the 1950s, the importance of government intervention with marine pollution protocol was recognized at the First Conference on the Law of the Sea. [77] Ocean dumping is controlled by international law, including:
And some sink to the ocean floor. Australia's national science agency CSIRO estimated that 14 million metric tons of microplastics are already on the ocean floor in 2020. [84] This represents an increase from a 2015 estimate that the world's oceans contain 93–236 thousand metric tons of microplastics [85] [86] and a 2018 estimate of 270 ...
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch formed gradually as a result of ocean or marine pollution gathered by ocean currents. [39] It occupies a relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bounded by the North Pacific Gyre in the horse latitudes. The gyre's rotational pattern draws in waste material from across the North Pacific ...
The North Atlantic garbage patch originates from human-created waste that travels from continental rivers into the ocean. [13] Once the trash has made it into the ocean, it is centralized by gyres, which collect trash in large masses. [11]
While marine pollution can be obvious, as with the marine debris shown above, it is often the pollutants that cannot be seen that cause most harm.. Marine pollution occurs when substances used or spread by humans, such as industrial, agricultural and residential waste, particles, noise, excess carbon dioxide or invasive organisms enter the ocean and cause harmful effects there.
Flotsam can be blown by the wind, or follow the flow of ocean currents, often ending up in the middle of oceanic gyres where currents are weakest. Within garbage patches, the waste is not compact, and although most of it is near the surface of the ocean, it can be found up to more than 30 metres (100 ft) deep in the water. [1]
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Plastics accounts for 80% of waste dispersed in the marine and coastal environment of the Mediterranean Sea. [24] Recent studies focus on the types of plastics found and primarily on the issue of microplastics, both at a global but also at a regional level, as in the case of the Mediterranean Sea, which was identified as a "target hotspot of the world" due to its amounts of microplastics ...