Canadian researchers trawling the sea found hundreds of microplastics
‘Where they were might surprise and depress you’
A Canadian environmental group is the latest to find evidence of microplastics in Antarctica.
The group, Ocean Legacy Foundation, sampled nine different sites in the waters around the Antarctic Peninsula — close to critical feeding habitat for whales, seals and penguins — in February using trawling nets.
It’s “a stark reminder that plastic pollution is everywhere,” said Chloé Dubois, co-founder of the foundation, a Canadian non-profit environmental group.
More than 375 microfibres were identified in the samples, which were processed by the University of British Columbia and Ocean Diagnostics, a microplastics research company. Microplastics, which can include plastic fibres from synthetic clothing or larger plastic items that have broken down into pieces smaller than five millimetres, can last hundreds of years, meaning they accumulate in the ocean.
