Vast majority of infamous giant plastic ‘garbage patch’ of plastic floating in Pacific Ocean comes from Japan and China – but US, South Korea and Taiwan are also to blame

Daily Mail —

Most of the vast floating ‘garbage’ patch of plastic in the Pacific Ocean comes from overfishing in two countries – Japan and China – new research reveals.

Scientists analyzed 573 kilograms of dry hard plastic debris that they collected with help from The Ocean Cleanup organization in 2019 and found that more than a quarter of the fragments were from ‘abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear’ (known as ALDFG). 

This category includes things such as oyster spacers, eel traps, lobster and fish tags, along with plastic floats and buoys.  

‘Here we show that most floating plastics in the North Pacific subtropical gyre can be traced back to five industrialized fishing nations,’ data scientist Laurent Lebreton and colleagues wrote. 

Read more >