Emma brings bad news from the deepest and most remote locations on Earth
Ocean Friends, I am afraid I have bad news. I heard through the wave-line there is plastic and other trash both in the Mariana Trench and at Point Nemo. My human friends may know the Mariana Trench as the deepest point on this planet (almost 11 kilometers under the surface), but Point Nemo is the most remote location on Earth, almost 1700 miles from inhabited land.
You see, a lot of plastic floats, and my ocean friends can eat it by mistake or get tangled in it. But a lot of plastic sinks, and that is now littering the ocean floor, where trash removal is not likely to happen. The bottom of the Mariana Trench is so deep, only state-of-the-art submersibles can reach it.
Point Nemo is so far away from humans, its name means “no one” in Latin (it’s not named after that famous captain nor clownfish). It’s so far, its location is used to direct falling spacecraft, so as to not harm humans, but instead fill it with space junk. Not many of my ocean friends will have heard of it, because a current taking away most nutrients means it’s a hard place to live.
The 8-month-long Volvo Ocean Race goes through it, and this year, two yachts sampled the water. One of the two yachts, aptly named Turn the Tide on Plastic, had teamed up with Sky Ocean Rescue to understand the scope of our plastic problem, and found between 9 and 27 microplastics per cubic meter of water floating there.
Please friends, recycle your plastic. Reduce your consumption of plastic. It truly is an international problem. Your little bottle cap in California could end up on a beach in the South China Sea or the bottom of the Pacific ocean.
Love,
Emma