Are Microplastics in Our Water Becoming a Macroproblem? | National Geographic

[Music] It was completely legal to dump plastic in the ocean until the '90s, and a lot of that plastic is still there because plastic lasts out there for a very long time. It just breaks down into smaller and smaller [Music] pieces. We know that over 300 species of wildlife have ingested this material. It's been reported in animals, and so as it is eaten by animals, it actually can move up the food web.

As the scientific literature on this issue increases, literally almost every habitat they've gone to — sea mounts, Arctic Ice, coral reefs, deep sea — it's become ubiquitous. I don't think anybody would fight anyone on an argument that plastic debris has not become a contaminant of concern. We're collecting the samples by using a manta troll. It's basically a big metal box with wings; it looks like a manta with a very long, about 12T mesh net off the back.

1, 2, 3, Splat! At the end is a piece we can take off that has collected all of the solids. You rinse it all out, filter it through another strainer, and then put it into a jar. This caught a lot of other stuff. If you want to take a look at what we're rinsing out of the screen, it's more tiny [Music] plastic.

What we're concerned about ultimately is what are the implications of trash going into the water, getting into the food we harvest, and we're still connecting the dots there a bit. We know that lots of trash goes out into the water. We know that the sun and waves break it down into small pieces. We know that many, many, many species of animals eat it, and we also know that bigger animals eat smaller animals.

We also know that we eat those big trophy fish, and so what we're really trying to figure out is how big a vector plastic is for transporting chemicals into the tissues of the animals that we eat every day. That's a big problem, much bigger than big chunks floating out into the ocean. We don't know exactly what that plastic is; we don't know where exactly it's coming from.

If we're trying to find policy and educational solutions to it, we need to know what we're targeting. We can't just ban plastic; that's not going to work. What kind of plastic is it, and what's the best policy route to reduce it? Is it a ban? Is it a fee? Is it market change? Is it education and behavior change work? What's the best way to tackle it? Until we know exactly what we're dealing with, we're not going to be able to design the right programs to address it.