University grant to study the distribution of plastic in the ocean

Erik van Sebille has started working as an Associate Professor at Utrecht University (UU). He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant that he will use to study the distribution of plastic in the ocean.
Researchers currently have a reasonably good understanding of how floating plastic moves around, he explains. “But over the past year and a half, we’ve realised that you miss quite a bit if you focus only on floating plastic. There are an estimated 250,000 tonnes of plastic in the ocean, but each year, another 5 million washes into the ocean. That means more than 99% of all of the plastic that has been dumped in the ocean is no longer floating on the surface” (News Item UU, 17 March 2017).
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