Local resident and photographer, Brian Spurr, snapped these images of the rubbish washed down in the floods. PHOTO: Brian Spurr Photography
A NEW study has shown that the Indian Ocean is the second-most polluted in the world, with more than one trillion pieces of rubbish floating in it. While most people think about ‘islands of plastic’ floating in the ocean, the reality is much grimmer. The ocean’s plastic is not centralised but broken up in tiny, confetti-like pieces.
A recent paper entitled ‘Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans’ by oceanographer, Marcus Eriksen, was released after he conducted a six-year study. His team of researchers went on a number of expeditions across all five of the sea’s major gyres collecting samples. Their conclusion is that there are more than five trillion pieces of plastic floating in our oceans. The North Pacific ocean has two trillion pieces of plastic floating around while the Indian Ocean has one trillion pieces of plastic floating around
More than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea. This is model prediction of global count density of plastics in our ocean. PHOTO: Marcus Eriksen
Bart Fokkens of the Dusi uMngeni Conservation Trust said the recent rains really showed the extent of the rubbish coming from our rivers into the sea.
“In just two clean-ups we collected two tons of rubbish. We regularly clear trash booms, which catch much of the solid waste that floats down the river, and they are set up at various strategic points. We’ve also set one up near the Beachwood Mangroves, which has been extremely effective in keeping rubbish out of the reserve.
The trash booms prevent floating rubbish from going down the river.
“However with the heavy rains, the booms were dislodged by trees and large pieces of wood, which flooded the uMngeni River with rubbish. The booms have been extremely effective in keeping out rubbish. We recently received a R60 000 donation from the Paddle for the Planet programme, which we are going to use to build more sophisticated booms so we can measure and collect more data,” he said.
