Where did all the plastic pollution in the Indian Ocean go? | MNN

You have probably heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre in circulation of plastic waste suspended in the Pacific Ocean. You may be even aware of the existence of other small garbage plots in the North and South Atlantic Oceans.

But what about the Indian Ocean? Where do all his plastic garbage accumulate?

Alarmingly, scientists do not really have an answer to this question, despite the fact that it is estimated that more plastic waste is dumped in the Indian Ocean than anywhere else on Earth.

Part of the mystery is that the Indian Ocean does not have as much monitoring technology in place to track the problem as other oceans. Another part, however, involves an environmental enigma. The Indian Ocean just does not seem to contain as much plastic waste as it should. So where does all his plastic go?

To solve this problem, researchers have recently embarked on the most comprehensive survey of Indian Ocean currents, collecting information from more than 22,000 drifting satellite drifting buoys that had been released around the world. oceans According to Phys.org, these buoys have been used to simulate plastic waste streams around the world with a focus on the Indian Ocean.

The researchers have uncovered some places where plastic is probably piling up, as in the Bay of Bengal, surrounded to the west by India populated by numerous populations, at the same time. is by Bangladesh, and Myanmar and Thailand. But on the whole, gyres do not appear to form in the Indian Ocean in the same way as in other oceans.

"Our study shows that the atmospheric and oceanic attributes of the Indian Ocean are different from those of other ocean basins and that there may not be a concentrated dump," explained the main author, Mirjam van der Mheen. "Therefore, the mystery of the missing plastic is even greater in the Indian Ocean."

The models, however, revealed an important clue to the disappearance of the plastic. In fact, the Indian Ocean has a leak and much of its plastic could seep into another ocean, the South Atlantic.

"Due to the Asian monsoon system, the southeast trade winds in the southern Indian Ocean are more powerful than those in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans," van der Mheen said. "These strong winds push floating plastics farther to the west, in the south of the Indian Ocean, compared to other oceans."

In other words, much of the plastic of the Indian Ocean is probably drifting beyond South Africa and adding to the soup of the South Atlantic waste fields.

The results highlight the need for global plastic waste tracking systems, as waste dumps around the world are not isolated whirlpools. Rather, there is a complex network of interconnected oceanic channels that can not be fully understood in isolation.

"The technology to remotely follow plastics does not exist yet, we must use indirect methods to determine the fate of plastics in the Indian Ocean," said Professor Chari Pattiaratchi, of the Oceans Graduate School of the University of Western Australia.

Where did all the plastic pollution in the Indian Ocean go?

The Indian Ocean is the largest plastic dump in the world, but some of them are leaking elsewhere.