Even in the open sea, many miles away from the coast, the plastic from our everyday lives is everywhere.
Plastic waste is overwhelming wildlife: wrapped around the fins of Risso’s dolphins in the open sea, trapping and killing hundreds of species – not only sea turtles, but even microscopic zooplankton. We record it even on uninhabited islets, inside the nests of Eleonora’s falcon.
While monitoring marine species in the Aegean Sea, researchers of the Archipelagos Institute come face to face every day with the heavy footprint of plastic pollution created by our daily lives.
The plastic we overconsume and discard into the environment has become something we treat as normal – a habit of our time that should concern us all. Plastic litter scattered along roadsides, outside waste bins, in empty lots, along riverbanks and in ports eventually finds its way into marine ecosystems. Within months – sometimes even weeks – it breaks down into microplastics and eventually nanoplastics that enter the cells of marine organisms and humans alike.
Through this destructive cycle, plastic pollution enters the food chain, causes the painful deaths of thousands of marine animals, and accumulates even in the deepest and most remote parts of our seas and oceans.
This reality should not only alarm us – it should wake us up and push us to act!