A Once Pristine Pacific Island Is Now Covered By 17 Tons Of Plastic Trash

You've probably heard about massive islands of plastic debris floating around in the Pacific Ocean, but all that petroleum-based trash is also turning otherwise pristine actual islands into garbage heaps.

Researchers from Australia and the UK say they've found what's believed to be the place with the highest density of plastic debris anywhere in the world. On the beaches of isolated Henderson Island in the South Pacific, over 3,000 miles from the nearest major population center of any kind, they found what they estimate to be more than 17 tons of plastic waste, with over 3,500 new pieces of junk washing up every day.

"What's happened on Henderson Island shows there's no escaping plastic pollution even in the most distant parts of our oceans," said Dr. Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania. "It's likely that our data actually underestimates the true amount of debris on Henderson Island as we were only able to sample pieces bigger than two millimeters down to a depth of 10 centimeters, and we were unable to sample along cliffs and rocky coastline."

Henderson Island is part of the UK's Pitcairn Islands territory and was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1988.

"This gem in the middle of the Pacific is one of the world's best remaining examples of an elevated coral atoll ecosystem," reads the United Nations agency's description of the island.

While the lack of much fresh water on Henderson Island has made it essentially impossible for humans to live upon its shores, humanity's impacts are still coming to dominate its sensitive ecosystem. When they visited, the researchers observed local hermit crabs making their homes from disposed plastic containers and sea turtles entangled in discarded fishing line on the beach.

"Research has shown that more than 200 species are known to be at risk from eating plastic, and 55% of the world's seabirds, including two species found on Henderson Island, are at risk from marine debris," Lavers said.

Still, the dramatic impacts seen on Henderson Island are truly insignificant when taken in the global scope.

"The 17.6 tons of anthropogenic debris estimated to be present on Henderson Island account for only 1.98 seconds’ worth of the annual global production of plastic," writes Lavers and co-author Alexander Bond in their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.