Thousands of metric tons of plastic were spotted Tuesday in the open Mediterranean Sea, between Corsica and the island of Elba. Carried by ocean currents, the debris formed a plastic island several tens of kilometers long.
Kilometers of plastic waste floating on the surface of the water… This is the sad sight currently unfolding in the Mediterranean Sea, between Corsica and the Italian island of Elba. According to France Bleu, a plastic «island» several dozen kilometers long was spotted on Tuesday, May 21, off the coast of Corsica. The debris, carried by ocean currents, gradually gathered to form a compact, discontinuous island of trash.
While this phenomenon is impressive, it is unfortunately not new. According to François Galgani, head of Ifremer in Bastia, it has even become a recurring issue: « Because of the way the currents flow, there are regularly very, very high concentrations in that area, ", he said in an interview with France Bleu RCFM. Currents inMediterranean Sea Northwestern winds are organized in such a way that the water flows northward along the Italian coast. When it reaches the continental shelf off the island of Elba in the Tuscan Archipelago, it cannot pass through and is therefore forced into the Corsican Channel. This is why we see higher densities there. »
According to him, the risk is that we will see « mass arrivals [plastic] along the Corsican coast »in the event of adverse weather conditions,« " the northeast wind in the summer, for example ».
A temporary phenomenon
Around the globe, plastic pollution in the oceans is reaching an extremely alarming scale: there are so many «plastic islands» that they no longer surprise anyone. In some areas, they have grown so large that we’ve had to adapt our vocabulary. In the North Pacific, between California and Japan, people now refer to the gigantic vortex of debris floating on the ocean’s surface as the “plastic continent.”.
Unlike these «islands in the Pacific or even in the Atlantic"," continues François Galgani, whose constant currents cause accumulations to occur in the same places every time », in the Mediterranean Sea, the «plastic island' phenomenon is short-lived: " These are areas of temporary accumulation, lasting a few days or a few weeks—up to three months at most—but never permanent. »
In reality, these plastic islands are just the tip of the iceberg. According to scientists’ estimates, the plastic waste visible on the surface accounts for only 1 % of all the plastic that has washed up in the ocean. This is because, in the ocean, waste breaks down into micro- and nanoplastics—particles that are nearly invisible to the naked eye but capable of traveling considerable distances. Last week, researchers found more than 400 million plastic fragments on the shores of the Cocos Islands, a remote archipelago 2,100 km west of Australia.
