South Pacific Plastic Garbage Dump

3,500 Pieces of Plastic Trash Wash Up Daily                   IAIN MCGREGOR/STUFF

The Pitcairn Islands are among the most remote places on earth. Four tiny dots raising above the South Pacific, roughly 3500 miles from South America to the east and New Zealand to the West. Pitcairn Island is inhabited mostly by descendants of the famous Bounty mutineers and their Tahitian companions, who settled on the island in 1790. By far largest of the islands is Henderson, which is also the most interesting from a scientific standpoint.

Thirty years ago it was designated a Unesco World Heritage site, one of the best remaining examples of an elevated coral atoll ecosystem. As well as an important site for breeding seabirds, the island is home to four endemic land birds: a fruit dove, lorikeet, reed warbler and the plucky flightless crake.

In 2012 supported by the United Kingdom government and with financial assistance from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Pitcairn Islanders worked to create a massive marine sanctuary. While supporting that effort a closer look at Henderson Island revealed an ugly truth in the age of plastic.

… filmmaker Jon Slayer visited the island as part of an expedition to support efforts to create an enormous marine sanctuary in the island group. The images he captured - of fishing nets and buoys, plastic water bottles, helmets, and crates scattered over more than two kilometres of beach - were uploaded to Google Earth.

Five years later:

An analysis, published in 2017, estimated 18 tonnes of plastic lay on the faraway shores. The island was said to have "the highest density of plastic debris" recorded anywhere, with 3500 new items washing up each day.

And this year:

Henderson Island lies in the world's third-largest marine protected area - an 830,000 square kilometre "no-take zone". Fishing, aside from some traditional, and non-commercial catch, is illegal, as is seafloor mining.

Yet of the six tonnes of garbage collected on a June science and conservation expedition, an estimated 60 per cent appeared to be associated with industrial fishing.

It’s believed that most of the plastic that ends up on Henderson Island is from South America or lost from passing ships. But the clean-up team on the island in June found items from all corners of the globe. Spirits bottled in Japan, Scotland and Puerto Rico; a rubber boot manufactured in the Netherlands; and a hard hat from a building yard in the United States.

Everyday household items covered the beach: laundry baskets, toilet seats, razors, toothbrushes and dozens of shoelaces.

Aside from the fishing gear, most of the items washing up here are garbage. The bits and pieces of a world filled with plastic stuff that gets tossed out thousands of miles away from Henderson Island. But, here is where the bill gets paid for our plastic laden lifestyle.

As well as being unsightly, the litter can be deadly to wildlife. Trinkets and single-use plastics are often found in the stomachs of dead sea birds and whales. Other marine creatures - such as sharks, turtles and dolphins - become ensnared, disfigured and sometimes drown.

Plastics break down and end up as microplastics, defined as less than 5mm in diameter, and nanoplastics (less than 0.001 mm). These are ingested by tiny organisms like plankton, sending the particles up through the food chain.

It is hard to underestimate the damage being done to life on earth by our garbage.