(IFREMER), Centre Méditerranée La Seyne‐sur‐Mer, France Olivia Gérigny Institut Français de Recherche pour l'Exploitation de la MER (IFREMER) Centre Méditerranée La Seyne‐sur‐Mer, France
Aoife A. Gowen School of Biosystems and Food Engineering University College Dublin Dublin, Ireland
Xuan Guo Laboratory of Environmental Technology INET, Tsinghua University Beijing, China
Peter T. Harris Grid Arendal Arendal, Norway
M. Kooi Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group Wageningen University The Netherlands
Bimali Koongolla Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Institution of South China and Sea Ecology and Environmental Engineering Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Guangzhou, China
Katrina Knauer Novoloop, Inc. Menlo Park, USA
L. Lebreton The Ocean Cleanup Rotterdam, The Netherlands and The Modelling House Raglan, New Zealand
Daoji Li State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research East China Normal University Shanghai, China
Kai Liu State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research East China Normal University Shanghai, China
Angiolillo Michela Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e Ricerca Ambientale (ISPRA) Roma, Italy and Stazione Zoologica Anton Dohrn (SZN) Napoli, Italy
Thomas Maes Grid Arendal Arendal, Norway
T. Mani The Ocean Cleanup Rotterdam, The Netherlands
S. M. Mintenig Aquatic Ecology and Water Quality Management Group Wageningen University The Netherlands
M. B. Tekman Deep‐Sea Ecology and Technology, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar Research Germany
Tim van Emmerik Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group Wageningen University The Netherlands
S. Nuojua University of Plymouth Plymouth, UK
S. Pahl University of Plymouth Plymouth, UK and University of Vienna Vienna, Austria
Karen Raubenheimer Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) University of Wollongong Wollongong, Australia
Katherine R. Shaw Chemical Sciences Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology and Center for Marine Debris Research Hawaii Pacific University
Anna Schwarz Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) Utrecht, The Netherlands
Natalie S. Smith International Marine Litter Research Unit, School of Biological and Marine Sciences University of Plymouth Plymouth, United Kingdom
Eric Tambutté Centre Scientifique de Monaco Monaco, Principality of Monaco
Brijesh Kumar Tiwari Department of Food Chemistry and Technology Teagasc Food Research Centre Dublin, Ireland
Richard C. Thompson International Marine Litter Research Unit, School of Biological and Marine Sciences University of Plymouth Plymouth, United Kingdom
Tim van Emmerik Hydrology and Quantitative Water Management Group Wageningen University Wageningen, The Netherlands
Jun‐Li Xu School of Biosystems and Food Engineering University College Dublin Belfield, Ireland
H. Wolter The Ocean Cleanup Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Jianlong Wang Laboratory of Environmental Technology INET, Tsinghua University Beijing, China
Ming Zhao School of Biosystems and Food Engineering University College Dublin Belfield, Ireland and Department of Food Chemistry and Technology Teagasc Food Research Centre Dublin, Ireland
Preface
Interestingly, the invention of the first plastic was closely linked to the conservation of the African elephant. The material was invented as a low‐cost replacement for ivory used to make Billiard balls back in the 1800s. With a single elephant tusk yielding just three balls, the expense, difficulty, and perhaps even the brutality of securing ivory, drove Michael Phelan, a star player of the game and an entrepreneur of his day, to announce a prize for anyone with an apt substitute for the unique ivory. That led the US inventor Wesley Hyatt, in 1869, to come up with hardened nitrocellulose (which he called celluloid) as a good substitute. Though he did not receive the prize, his efforts ushered in an era of plastics, a defining feature of the anthropocene epoch. It was soon followed by Bakelite in 1907 and then by a series of other plastics that continue to serve us even today. In fact, all the common plastics in use today were discovered by the early 1950s. An early success was nylon (invented by Carothers at Du Pont) introduced to the consumer at the 1939 World Fair, causing a sensation with 64 million pairs of stockings sold in a year. As nylon was a replacement the natural silk used in hosiery, the discovery of this first synthetic textile fiber saved millions of silkworms from an early demise as the demand for fine natural silk leggings dropped.
Plastics captured the imagination of the public and much was expected of this miraculous material which lived up to public expectations, quickly finding applications in fabric, packaging as well as in numerous other consumer products. The August 1955 issue of the Life magazine proudly announced the dawn of a plastic era with “throwaway living,” where housewives would finally be relieved of having to clean utensils after each meal. Not only did this ominous claim come true with every single item in the Life magazine illustration becoming a common household product, but also introducing a host of innovative single‐use plastics products widely used today. With nearly half the commodity plastics produced today devoted to disposable products, the unmanaged or carelessly disposed post‐use plastics have now ended up in our environment, ironically harming wildlife, especially marine organisms. Today every aquatic system including the Marianna trench, the Arctic ice masses, and rivers on even uninhabited islands around the world are contaminated with post‐use plastics. Marine convergence zones, like those in the Northern Pacific, concentrate small fragments of plastics, the microplastics, counted in the trillions in the upper ocean. As some plastics in the ocean sink to the sediment, what is sampled in surface water is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Their abundance in the water column, especially the bottom sediment, is reported to be much larger than in either surface water or the dry beach sediment. How much plastic enters the oceans is not precisely known. An estimate places the influx in 2010 at 4.8–12.7 MMT but it keeps growing each year.
An Already Stressed Ocean
The ocean that ends up receiving an annual increment of plastic waste from both land‐generated debris via riverine transport and also directly from coastal areas, is already under stress. The burning of fossil fuels over the past several hundred years has already increased the acidity of surface waters by 30% threatening the survival of hard‐shelled species; it’s impact on the global fishery is not reliably known. Rampant unsustainable
