Long-Term Changes in the Abundance, Size, and Morphotype of Marine Plastics in the North Pacific

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The paper to which I'll refer in this post is this one: Long-Term Changes in the Abundance, Size, and Morphotype of Marine Plastics in the North Pacific Kentaro Miyazono, Kazuaki Tadokoro, Gajahin G. N. Thushari, Hiroomi Miyamoto, Akinori Takasuka, Mikio Watai, Tohya Yasuda, Takuya Sato, Rei Yamashita, Taketoshi Kodama, and Kazutaka Takahashi Environmental Science & Technology 2025 59 (9), 4608-4617.

The paper is open access, so there is no need for me to comment much on the topic, as interested people can read the paper themselves. A brief excerpt is offered:

Marine plastic pollution is a serious global environmental issue. This problem is highlighted by the lower-than-expected amount of plastic debris floating on the ocean surface layer (OSL), known as the “missing plastic” phenomenon, (1,2) which refers to the challenges in tracking plastic waste. This discrepancy could be due to the overestimation of input estimates and underestimation of the significance of plastic removal from the OSL, including fragmentation. (3) Several studies reassessed plastic discharge from possible sources (4,5) and removal/fragmentation processes at the OSL. (6−8) However, the dynamics of the large amounts of plastic that have entered the oceans remain unclear; notably, land-based sources of plastic debris transported by river systems contribute 80% of the total plastic debris in the marine environment. (9) Microplastics of