Posted on 18 February 2022

Commissioned by WWF and conducted by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, the report “Impacts of plastic pollution in the ocean on marine species, biodiversity and ecosystems'' notes that microplastic concentrations above a threshold level of 1.21 x 10⁵ items per cubic metre have now been estimated in several regions around the world. This threshold, above which significant ecological risks are likely to occur, has already been exceeded in certain pollution hotspots like the Mediterranean, the East China and Yellow Seas and the Arctic sea ice.
 
The review warns that by the end of the century, marine areas more than two and a half times the size of Greenland could exceed ecologically dangerous thresholds of microplastic concentration, as the amount of marine microplastic could increase 50-fold by then. This is based on projections that plastic production is expected to more than double by 2040 resulting in plastic debris in the ocean quadrupling by 2050.
 
Given the pervasiveness of plastic pollution, nearly every species has likely now encountered plastic. Negative impacts from plastic pollution are already detectable in most species groups while the productivity of several of the world’s most important marine ecosystems, like coral reefs and mangroves, are under significant risk.
 
Where other threats such as overfishing, global warming, eutrophication, or shipping overlap with plastic pollution hotspots, the negative impacts are amplified. For already threatened species, some of which live in such hotspots, such as monk seals or sperm whales in the Mediterranean, plastic pollution is an additional stress factor pushing these populations towards extinction.