Seagrass and the Fight for Cleaner Oceans

Plastic waste from human activity is having a major impact on ocean and coastal environments - but with an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the sea, that’s hardly surprising.

There are many human-led initiatives that are helping to clean up our oceans of plastic, but the natural world is also doing its part!

The seagrass, Posidonia oceanica, which is abundant in the mediterranean has been found to filter and trap 1470 pieces of plastic per kg of washed up seaweed.

Researchers worked this figure out by dissecting and cataloguing the washed up seagrass. By logging how much plastic was caught between the leaves they calculated that every year, up to 900 million pieces of plastic might be removed by seagrass in the mediterranean.

Unfortunately, it is still estimated that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish.

So we can’t relax just yet.