Our Ocean Floors are covered in Garbage

A shocking amount of garbage consisting of plastic bags, bottles, nets and a lot more, been found in a new survey of the seafloor.

The survey covered the area throughout the Mediterranean all the way to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

We dump over 6.4 million tonnes of garbage in the oceans, all over the planet, each year.

The effects are very serious.

Christopher Pham from the University of the Azores, noted in a statement:

“We found that plastic was the most common litter item found on the seafloor, while trash associated with fishing activities (discarded fishing lines and nets) was particularly common on seamounts, banks, mounds and ocean ridges. The most dense accumulations of litter were found in deep underwater canyons.”

via io9

Read the study at PLoS One