Sea Education Association, Post Office Box 6, Woods Hole, MA 02543, USA.
Science. 2010 Sep 3;329(5996):1185-8. doi: 10.1126/science.1192321. Epub 2010 Aug 19.
Plastic marine pollution is a major environmental concern, yet a quantitative description of the scope of this problem in the open ocean is lacking. Here, we present a time series of plastic content at the surface of the western North Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea from 1986 to 2008. More than 60% of 6136 surface plankton net tows collected buoyant plastic pieces, typically millimeters in size. The highest concentration of plastic debris was observed in subtropical latitudes and associated with the observed large-scale convergence in surface currents predicted by Ekman dynamics. Despite a rapid increase in plastic production and disposal during this time period, no trend in plastic concentration was observed in the region of highest accumulation.
海洋塑料污染是一个主要的环境问题，但对于开阔海域中这一问题的范围还缺乏定量描述。在这里，我们呈现了 1986 年至 2008 年北大西洋西部和加勒比海海面塑料含量的时间序列。在 6136 个表层浮游生物网拖网采集的漂浮塑料片中，有超过 60%是有浮力的，通常尺寸为毫米级。在亚热带纬度观测到了最高浓度的塑料碎片，与 Ekman 动力学预测的表面流的大尺度汇聚有关。尽管在此期间塑料产量和处理量迅速增加，但在积累量最高的地区，并未观察到塑料浓度的趋势。
