Cleaning Up the Oceans

Discovery

BBC

Science, Technology

4.3 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 4 July 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

More than five million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the oceans every year. The abandoned fishing gear and bags and bottles left on beaches can smother birds and sea life. Now there is also evidence that the small particles created as the plastics are eroded by the waves and sunlight are eaten by all kinds of marine species.

Roland Pease is on a beach in Devon in south-west England with professor Richard Thompson of Plymouth University finding the plastic debris before it gets into the sea. Professor of Ecotoxicology at Exeter University, Tamara Galloway, talks about her discoveries of microplastics in plankton and other species. Professor Tony Andrady of North Carolina University in the US, describes his paper that estimated the amount of plastic waste that is finding its way into the marine environment, and Dr Nancy Wallace of the US Marine Debris Program explains how they organise beach clean ups and raise awareness of the problem amongst the public.

Photo: Tyres, plastic bottles and general rubbish washed up by the sea, litter the beaches in Prestwick, Scotland. Credit: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thank you for downloading from the BBC.
0:03.0	The details of our complete range of podcasts and our terms of use,
0:07.0	go to BBCworldservice.com slash podcasts. broadcasts. where the tide is higher. Yeah. Devon in the southwest of England is a popular
0:26.0	seaside region and a good place to start this edition of Discovery from the BBC
0:31.2	exploring a growing threat to the ocean environment.
0:35.0	We've come along to a beach just near to the university at a place called Wengbury.
0:40.0	It looks a fairly clean, clear beach, but when we start to get a little bit closer
0:44.8	we see that actually there are quite a lot of items of litter here.
0:50.3	This program is about rubbish, a particular kind of rubbish.
0:55.0	I'm Roland Pease and I've come to Wembury with Plymouth University's Professor Richard Thompson,
1:00.0	one of the world's leading authorities on its impacts.
1:04.1	We've got a plastic bag from quite a well-known supermarket washed up on the strang line.
1:10.0	We've got a piece of packaging. It looks like it said some sort of yogurt in it, plastic again.
1:16.0	We've got a packet of some sort of crisps, a little snack type crisp, another item of plastic packaging.
1:24.0	What's this netting?
1:26.0	This nylon netting?
1:27.0	We've got fishing net actually,
1:29.0	so some sort of nylon fishing related debris.
1:32.0	That's actually caught up in a part of a sea fan
1:34.2	called Unicella and it may have caused it to break off of the sea bed. So this is
1:38.3	actually washed up. This is all washed up and what we're seeing here is some
1:42.3	fishing related debris but actually quite a lot of everyday items of packaging.
	...

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