An independent team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, and Aalborg University, Denmark, published a study in the journal Environmental Science and Technology on microplastics in the Mediterranean Sea, focusing on how they sink to the seafloor and what happens to them once they do. The team found that these microplastics are preserved on the seabed when they reach it, possibly due to a lack of erosion, oxygen or light that prevents them from degrading. Studies show that the number of plastic particles deposited on the seafloor has tripled since 2000 and that the cumulative number of plastic particles has been growing as these materials are produced and used globally.
