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Wind Pushes Plastics Deeper Into Oceans, Driving Trash Estimates Up http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1335441398
After taking samples of water at a depth of 16 feet (5 meters), Proskurowski, a researcher at the University of Washington, discovered that wind was pushing the lightweight plastic particles below the surface. That meant that decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris in the oceans, Proskurowski said....
[D]ata collected from just the surface of the water commonly underestimates the total amount of plastic in the water by an average factor of 2.5. In high winds the volume of plastic could be underestimated by a factor of 27....
Proskurowski gathered data on a 2010 North Atlantic expedition where he and his team collected samples at the surface, plus an additional three or four depths down as far as 100 feet.
"Almost every tow we did contained plastic regardless of the depth," he said.
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[Read more stories about:
plastic gyre, plastic problems, unintended consequences, holyshit, toxic buildup]
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'Doc Jim says:
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That plastic could be the result of natural variation, couldn't it? Hunh?
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