Even the deepest waters in the ocean are not exempted from human waste. The Mariana Trench, which is the deepest part of the Earth, is infiltrated with man-made waste and pollutants, said biologist Alan Jamieson of Newcastle University in England.
The remote and mostly untouched Mariana Trench is very much polluted. The pollution is not only seen and felt by human beings, it has reached the deepest ocean water. According to The Guardian, scientists have found heavily polluted small crustaceans in it. 10km deep down the trench, a type of pollutant is found, known as persistent organic pollutants or POPs.
NPR has reported that the small crustaceans or the amphipods were contaminated with it, specifically PCBs or polychlorinated biphenyls. It is a chemical that is very toxic and was used in the 1930s but was later banned in the late 1970s. The scientist said that every sample they had were heavily polluted. They were shocked at how extreme the pollution and contamination of the animals.
Jamieson said that the percentage of the pollution in the Mariana Trench is so high that it is 50 times higher than most polluted places like China's most polluted rivers. Jamieson added that he and his team weren't that shocked about the POPs going down the ocean. "When it gets down into the trenches, there is nowhere else for it to go. The surprise was just how high the levels were - the contamination in the animals was sky high." he added.
According to him, Mariana trench and other deep parts of the ocean are full of extremely resourceful scavenging animals like the 2cm-long amphipods they sampled. They have also sampled other places and found the same outcome. The researchers also found brutal pollution in amphipods that were collected in the Kermadec trench, which is 7,000km from the Mariana trench. They were more than what the northwest Pacific in Suruga Bay in Japan, an infamous pollution blackspot, has.
There were also other findings from other scientists in other parts of the world. Other disturbing man-made wastes like a tin can of spam were found in some parts of Mariana Trench. Scientists are hoping that more thorough research will be conducted to see what the ocean floor looks like now.
