Beyond Plastics, Beyond Fishing Gear, Beyond Dead Fish, all manner of things Pollute Oceans

According to one recent estimate of how much plastics lie on the ocean floor, eleven million tonnes of them make this sensitive part of the earth a resting point, one hundred times more than plastics on ocean surfaces, with many more to come by 2050, when plastic production reaches around 590 million metric tonnes.

But the issue goes beyond plastics, because each year, the world witnesses an average loss of about 1,382 containers to the ocean, with an astonishing 2,675 containers vanishing beneath the waves from November 2020 to January 2021 alone, 2021 seeing the sharpest rise in these incidents since 2013.

Also, thousands and thousands of cars stay on the ocean floor, with Felicity Ace, a cargo ship carrying luxury cars accounting for nearly 4,000 of them when it sank in February 16, 2023, and a cargo ship called  Blue Belt responsible for some of the vehicles also, when it sank with at least 170 Toyotas on board in December 1977.

Other materials than plastics, containers, and cars make up the wastes on the ocean floor, with at least three million shipwrecks lying across the ocean floor, more than 25 million pots and traps getting there yearly, while nearly two percent of all fishing gear experience the same thing.

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