Mass rubbish found on fishing grounds

MORE than 100 million pieces of rubbish are lying at the bottom of the Barents Sea, one of the world\’s richest fishing grounds, Norwegian researchers have discovered.
The evidence is based on video footage filmed by scientists taking part in a project known as Mareano Bottom Mapping.
Weighing an estimated 23,000 tonnes, the refuse – much of it plastic – was found in relatively remote waters, which should be regarded as pristine because they are a long way from large coastal cities and busy shipping lanes.
But most of the litter was concentrated in an area where there is a lot of business activity on the surface and also on the bottom of the sea.
Lene Buhl-Mortensen, a researcher at Norway\’s Institute of Marine Research, said: ‘We clearly see that there is a build-up of garbage in some types of seabed landscape, especially in deep valleys and gorges where the waste is lying and cannot be carried away by the currents.
‘A lot of trash has also been found in areas where a great deal of fishing is carried out.
‘We observed a lot of garbage on the shelf outside an area known as Møre og Romsdal, where there is high fishing activity.
‘Most of it was from broken fishing gear, and in some places we noted up to 6,000 garbage finds per square kilometre.
‘This is a lot when compared with an average of 230 finds per square kilometre around the continental shelves of Europe.’