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Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans (2007-2013)

Created 25/06/2025

Updated 25/06/2025

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Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Here we report an estimate of the total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world’s oceans from 24 expeditions (2007–2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, coastal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows (N5680) and visual survey transects of large plastic debris (N5891). Using an oceanographic model of floating debris dispersal calibrated by our data, and correcting for wind-driven vertical mixing, we estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons. When comparing between four size classes, two microplastic <4.75 mm and meso- and macroplastic >4.75 mm, a tremendous loss of microplastics is observed from the sea surface compared to expected rates of fragmentation, suggesting there are mechanisms at play that remove <4.75 mm plastic particles from the ocean surface.

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Additional Info

Field Value
Title Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans (2007-2013)
Language eng
Licence Not Specified
Landing Page https://data.gov.au/data/dataset/a87e94a2-c9eb-499a-b398-3b0e1f2e5c71
Contact Point
CSIRO Marlin Data Catalogue
marcus@5gyres.org
Reference Period 09/10/2018
Geospatial Coverage
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
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Data Portal CSIRO Marlin

Data Source

This dataset was originally found on CSIRO Marlin "Plastic Pollution in the World’s Oceans (2007-2013)". Please visit the source to access the original metadata of the dataset:
https://marlin.csiro.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/csw/dataset/plastic-pollution-in-the-worlds-oceans-2007-2013