Remote Atlantic Island Becoming a Trash Island
Within below 10 years, plastic pollutants near St. Helena, Eastern Falkland, and Ascension Islands have multiplied 10 times and one hundred times within the past thirty years. Trash like fishermen nets, straws that get dumped and plenty of degenerated plastic have washed up at their shores.
From 2013 to 2019, research was carried out to check the extent of the trash in the ocean in South Atlantic. The researchers collected specimens of marine waste from the water, the seashores and the sea-bottom. Researchers additionally analysed trash ingestion in more than two thousand animals of twenty-six different species. The animals were found to have eaten a high amount of plastic.
Thirty years back, these remote places used to be clean. The plastic island Atlantic problem has gone up much during that time and it is currently very common. The beaches are the most affected.
The extent of trash island at the moment is competing with the poisoned seashores at the industrialised side of the Atlantic. At St. Helena and East Falkland, three hundred bits of trash island per square meter got discovered. This is 10 times higher compared to past years. It is not easy to tell where this trash normally comes from but the extent of UV destruction here implies that most of it came from different places.
The trash island is ugly to look at and the plastic trash which includes things such as big containers breakdown in water and producing dangerous chemicals and gases. Plastic particles released are eaten by animals that live in water and they get poisoned or suffer blockages in their intestines.
The trash island if not fixed soon, it will become hard and costly to fix later. Actually, people have started to tackle this problem. For instance, during summer, 5 industrialised countries offered to form an ocean plastic charter. Also recently, ocean tests started on the problematic artificial shore meant to gather the plastic waste at the Pacific region.
This trash island in ocean issue is not only dangerous animals that live in water but to the ecosystem too. Many people depend on the food that gets contaminated every day. We hope this trash island issue gets fixed soon. Write to us if you have any questions or would like to contribute to this topic.
Author Bio
The writer of this article also works as an environmentalist. Thomas Glare is always doing everything he can to protect the environment and he uses his articles to encourage other people to do the same. Besides being a great writer and an outstanding environmentalist, he likes adventure, sports, partying and reading.
