A shocking animation has been created by scientists showing the tiny movements of plastic in Earth’s oceans.
The researchers used NASA satellite data to track the movement of microplastics – tiny plastic fragments less than five millimeters long in diameter.
The animations show a large concentration of microplastics around the South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and Central America’s West Coast.
The currents transport the plastic that has fallen into rivers and beaches to open oceans.
These plastics become small, microplastics when they are exposed to sunlight or waves. This can lead to fatal results for marine life.

Plastic from beaches and rivers is transported to the ocean by currents.
Eventually plastic becomes trapped in the centres of ocean basins or subtropical ‘gyres’ – large systems of rotating currents in each of the five major oceans.
Unfortunately, the world’s five subtropical gyres can go on to host ‘garbage patches’, comprised of plastic waste, fishing gear and other debris.
Because a lot ship traffic flows through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii it is one of the most famous.
According to NASA, 8,000,000 tons of plastic are emitted annually from beaches and rivers into the ocean.
The animation was created by scientists at the University of Michigan and detailed in a new paper published on IEEE Xplore.
They state that the ocean microplastic concentrations vary by region, with high levels found in North Atlantic and North Pacific Gyres.
“An innovative method has been developed to detect and image the distribution of microplastics in oceans.
Animation showing the locations and concentrations of floating plastics from April 2017 through September 2018
It shows some seasonal variations in microplastic concentrations – in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, for example, microplastic concentrations appear greater in the summer and lower in winter.
The ocean’s temperature is cooler, which means that there’s more vertical mixing.
Vertical mixing refers to the movement upward or downward of water or air due to temperature variations between the layers.

These animations and images show where and how many floating plastics were found between April 2017 and September 2018. Data were collected at 38° N and 38° South latitudes, which is the observation range for CYGNSS.
Scientists often estimate the quantity of plastic found in marine garbage by placing nets behind their boats.
NASA’s Earth Observatory says that this sampling technique is “geographically sparse” and doesn’t give any indication of the plastic concentrations over time.
The University of Michigan scientists developed a new way to measure the amount of microplastics found in oceans all over the globe.
The data was gathered from eight microsatellites, which are part the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System mission (CYGNSS).
The $157million CYGNSS project was established in 2016 and is primarily intended to improve hurricane forecasting.
Radio signals from GPS satellites reflect off of the ocean surface and CYGNSS satellites can detect these reflections.

Researchers used data from eight microsatellites that are part of the Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission (one depicted here)
Scientists can then analyse the signals to measure the roughness of the ocean surface.
This measurement provides scientists with an already useful tool to determine ocean wind speeds. It is also helpful for studying storms like hurricanes.
If there are plastics or other debris close to the ocean’s surface, the waves will be dampened which makes the surface less rough.
‘In cleaner waters, there’s a high degree of agreement between ocean roughness and wind speed,’ said Chris Ruf, principal investigator of the CYGNSS mission and one of the two authors of the paper.
“But you’ll notice a greater difference between the wind speed and surface roughness as you go into the Great Pacific Garbage Pocket.”
According to the team, this new technique will allow for better ocean microplastic monitoring and “support future model design and validation”.
Researchers at Kyushu University discovered that the ocean contains 24.4 trillion bits of microplastics and they are still counting.