Microscopic rubbish threatening our seas

David Green -

The “rubbish” we dump in our seas may be coming back to haunt us and Suffolk-based scientists are at the cutting edge of research.

Thomas Maes and Peter Kershaw are analysing data on the prevalence of marine litter in the oceans – particularly the build up of what has become known as micro-plastics.

These are tiny particles of plastic – invisible to the human eye – now to be found in huge volumes in the North Sea and elsewhere and, after being ingested by fish, are entering the human body with so far unknown consequences.

Maes and Kershaw work at the laboratories run by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), a Government agency which occupies Lowestoft’s former Grand Hotel, an imposing sea-front building which was in its commercial heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Cefas scientists design and implement ecosystem monitoring programmes, carry out formal environmental assessments and report their results directly to the Department of Environment (Defra) to help meet a range of global and European policy needs.

The agency has pioneered the use of “real time” instruments left at sea – attached to buoys.

Thomas Maes, 30, is one of the world’s leading experts in marine litter and I met him in a ground floor room at the Cefas laboratories.

He told me that the agency has been collecting marine litter data since 1992, on the back of fisheries research cruises, and he has been analysing the figures to assess the size of the problem.

The work has been expanded recently with trawls by a “manta” device which skims off particles floating on the surface of the sea.

“The initial results suggest widespread distribution of marine litter in the North Sea, dominated by plastics,” Thomas said.

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