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The fate of missing ocean plastics: Are they just a marine environmental problem?
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Researchers estimated a global ocean plastic mass budget to address the paradox of missing ocean plastics, finding that processes like fragmentation, sedimentation, and beaching account for much of the imbalance between plastic inputs and observed floating debris.
The fate of mismanaged plastic waste released into oceans (ocean plastics) remains a topic of debate, where the mass imbalance between the leakage and abundance in the world's oceans appears paradoxical. In the present study, a budget for ocean plastic mass was estimated based on a combination of numerical particle tracking and linear mass-balance models, both validated using a worldwide ocean plastic dataset. Integrating the time series of worldwide macroplastic emission from both rivers and the fisheries industry over the period 1961-2017 yielded a total mass of 25.3 million metric tonnes (MMT). Macro- and microplastics currently floating in the oceans, and microplastics on beaches, each account for 3-4% of the ocean plastics emitted worldwide to date. Overall, 23.4% of ocean plastics were macroplastics on beaches. Meanwhile, 66.7% of ocean plastics were heavier than seawater or microplastics removed from the upper ocean and beaches, which are difficult to monitor under current observation frameworks adopted worldwide. However, the present study on ocean plastics suggested that the whole ocean plastics accounted for only 4.7% of mismanaged plastic waste (542.2 MMT) generated between the 1960s and today.
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Searching for the missing plastic: a global surface mass budget for floating ocean plastics.
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Researchers constructed a global surface mass budget for floating ocean plastic, finding that the amount accumulating at the surface represents only a small fraction of total plastic entering the ocean. This study explores potential sinks including fragmentation, biofouling-driven sinking, and beaching to account for the missing plastic.
All is not lost: deriving a top-down mass budget of plastic at sea
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Using a top-down mass budget approach, this study estimated how much plastic is present in the ocean by accounting for known inputs and fragmentation processes. The analysis helps identify where plastic mass is "missing" — whether through burial, beaching, or degradation — a key question for understanding the long-term fate of ocean plastic pollution.
Plastic litter in the oceans. Most of it has gone missing, but it might just be transformed… or transported
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This review examines the ongoing debate over the apparent 'missing plastic' paradox in the world's oceans, where estimated plastic leakage greatly exceeds measured surface abundance. The authors discuss recent findings suggesting that plastic may be transformed through fragmentation and degradation or transported to deep ocean and coastal sediments rather than accumulating at the surface.
A global mass budget for positively buoyant macroplastic debris in the ocean
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A mass budget analysis challenged the conventional explanation that the majority of ocean macroplastic mass is converted to microplastics and sinks, instead arguing that coastal circulation dynamics may account for the discrepancy between plastic emission estimates and surface accumulation. The study suggests that decades-old objects still found at sea indicate longer surface residence times than current models assume.
A mass budget and box model of global plastics cycling, degradation and dispersal in the land-ocean-atmosphere system.
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Researchers developed a global mass budget and box model tracking plastic cycling across terrestrial, oceanic, and atmospheric reservoirs from 1950 to 2015, incorporating historical production data, fragmentation, and transport dynamics for macroplastics, large microplastics, and small microplastics. The model estimated that the deep ocean (82 Tg) and shelf sediments (116 Tg) represent major plastic reservoirs, and that even maximum feasible reduction scenarios would result in approximately 4-fold increases in atmospheric and aquatic microplastic exposure by 2050 due to legacy plastics already in circulation.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.