The plastic tide hitting Tobago’s shores

A new study has found that 97 per cent of the de­bris record­ed on To­ba­go’s At­lantic-fac­ing beach­es was plas­tic, but the garbage is not com­ing from where you think it is.

The re­port, Char­ac­ter­is­ing ma­rine plas­tic de­bris ac­cu­mu­la­tions on To­ba­go coastal en­vi­ron­ments, has point­ed to garbage trav­el­ling on At­lantic waves from dif­fer­ent coun­tries and land­ing on the coast­lines of To­ba­go. It is by no means a new phe­nom­e­non but one that rais­es alarm bells.

The re­searchers con­clud­ed that oceano­graph­ic fac­tors—cur­rents, winds and waves—are more im­por­tant than pop­u­la­tion den­si­ty alone in de­ter­min­ing where plas­tic ac­cu­mu­lates. Some heav­i­ly pol­lut­ed At­lantic beach­es are in sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas.