How Long Until It's Gone?

Estimated decomposition rates of common marine debris items

How long does plastic garbage last in the sea?

The truth is: It will never totally disapear. But it will break down into ever tinier and tinier particles, until there are only monomers left. And this can take hundreds of years!

The MARPOL (International Marine Pollution) rules are changing. There are more restrictions on what you can throw overboard, though plastic and oil have always been no-no's. Getting people to comply with the laws is the trick.

The Great Blue Hole

The Great Blue Hole

The Great Blue Hole is a large sink hole off the coast of Belize. It lies near the center of the Lighthouse Reef, a small atoll 70km from the mainland. The hole is almost perfectly circular in shape, almost 1000 feet wide and about 410 feet deep. The site was made famous by Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who declared it one of the top ten scuba diving sites in the world. In 1971, he brought his ship, the Calypso, to the hole to chart its depths.

The Great Blue Hole is a part of the larger Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System, a World Heritage Site of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).