Abstract
Research results about the movement and accumulation of floating marine debris drifting throughout the world’s oceans are reviewed in this paper. A mechanism for this accumulation and movement is strongly associated with surface currents consisting of the Ekman drift and the geostrophic current, because all floating marine debris is passive to surface currents. The basic published mechanism for the North Pacific is common across the world’s ocean. After marine debris accumulates in the narrow Ekman convergence zone, it is moved to the east by geostrophic currents. The most important thing is that floating marine debris concentrates in some specific regions, independent of the initial quantity of marine debris. In order to resolve this problem and to avoid an asbestos-like problem, the use of biodegradable polymers is important in our daily life.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Coe JM, Anderson S, Rogers DB (1997): Marine debris in the Caribbean region. In: Coe JM, Rogers DB (eds) Marine debris. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 25–33
Golik A (1997) Debris in the Mediterranean Sea: types, quantities, and behavior. In: Coe JM, Rogers DB (eds) Marine debris. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 7–14
Kubota M (1994) A mechanism for the accumulation of floating marine debris north of Hawaii. J Phys Oceanogr 24:1059–1064
Matsumura S, Nasu K (1997) Distribution of floating debris in the North Pacific Ocean: sighting surveys 1986–1991. In: Coe JM, Rogers DB (eds) Marine debris. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 15–24
Mio S, Takehama S (1988) Distribution and density of marine debris in the North Pacific based on sighting survey in 1987. In: INPEC (ed) Proceedings of 35th INPEC Meeting. Fisheries Agency of Japan, Tokyo
Meehl GA (1982) Characteristics of surface current flow inferred from a global ocean current data set. J Phys Oceanogr 12:538–555
Ribic CA, Johnson SW, Cole CA (1997) Distribution, type, accumulation, and source of marine debris in the United States, 1989–1993. In: Coe JM, Rogers DB (eds) Marine debris. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York, pp 35–47
Wakata Y, Sugimori Y (1990) Lagrangian motions and global density distributions of floating matter in the ocean simulated using ship data. J Phys Oceanogr 20:125–138
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge Tsurane Kuragano for providing us with the TOPEX/POSEIDON grid data and Shin’ichiro Kako for his help and support in preparing the figures. This research was partly supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Science Research (grant no. 12640425) of the Ministry of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, Japan.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Kubota, M., Takayama, K. & Namimoto, D. Pleading for the use of biodegradable polymers in favor of marine environments and to avoid an asbestos-like problem for the future. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 67, 469–476 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-004-1857-2
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00253-004-1857-2