(CNN) -- Another debris field, another new and so-far futile focus in the search for Flight MH370. Two weeks after the Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared, one thing has been made clear: the ocean is full of garbage, literally.
"It isn't like looking
for a needle in a haystack," Conservation International senior scientist
M. Sanjayan said of the difficulty in finding the Boeing 777 aircraft.
"It's like looking for a needle in a needle factory. It is one piece of
debris among billions floating in the ocean."
"One piece of debris among billions"
Environmentalists like
Sanjayan have warned for years that human abuse of the planet's largest
ecosystem causes major problems for ocean life and people that depend on
it.
Map of the search area
What happens next in Indian Ocean?
Two objects floating in
the southern Indian Ocean, including one nearly 80 feet long, initially
were called the best lead to date when a satellite detected them last
week.
So far, though, search
planes have yet to find them or any other plane debris, with speculation
mounting that the larger item was a shipping container lost at sea.
No definitive records
exist, but estimates for how many containers go overboard range from
about 700 to as many as 10,000 of the roughly 100 million that the World
Shipping Council says get shipped each year.
Most ocean garbage comes from land
Lost containers are only
a minor part of the problem. While ship waste also adds to ocean
pollution, most of the garbage comes from land, Sanjayan said.
More than a third of the
world's 7 billion people live within 60 miles of an ocean coast, and
their waste inevitably reaches the water -- either deliberately or
indirectly.
Estimates from various
sources, including the Japanese government, indicate that more than 10
million tons of debris -- including houses, tires, trees and appliances
-- washed into the sea in the 2011 tsunami.
In addition, discarded
plastics -- including countless bags like the kind routinely provided by
retail stores and fast food restaurants until a movement in recent
years to decrease their use -- form huge, churning garbage fields in the
rotating currents of ocean gyres. One in the north Pacific is estimated
to be at least 270,000 square miles, or an area larger than Texas.
Photos: The search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
Sanjayan said the
plastic breaks down in the saltwater to form a kind of "plastic soup"
that gets ingested by marine life. Millions of sea turtles die from the
plastic each year, he said, and one in 10 small bait fish has plastic in
its stomach.
That happens in the same waters that provide roughly 15% of the animal protein consumed by people.
The world's "toilet"
"The world does use the ocean as its toilet, and then expects that toilet to feed it," Sanjayan noted.
Many island nations and
coastal cities lack infrastructure sophisticated enough to deal with all
the waste produced, he said. In addition, much of that waste -- such as
plastics -- now is so durable that it lasts for decades or longer in
any environment.
Sanjayan cited Dhaka,
Bangladesh, as an example. Considered the fastest growing city in the
world, the capital of 15 million people could expand to more than 20
million people in the next decade, according to the United Nations.
Such growth far exceeds
the capacity to deal with the garbage and sewage, Sanjayan said, adding:
"All that waste in countries like that -- low-lying, prone to flooding
-- periodically flushes into the ocean."
CNN's Jason Hanna contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.