After a decade of testing, Northeastern researchers have uncovered a “light smog” of microplastics drifting below the surface of the world’s oceans — revealing far more plastic pollution in deep-sea waters than previously known.
Published in Nature, the study combines data from nearly 2,000 ocean sampling stations collected between 2014 and 2024. The findings show that microplastics are not just floating on the surface but are spread throughout the ocean’s depths.
The research is not a global analysis. Sampling for microplastics occurs the most in northern ocean waters, where there is more land and people fringing the water. But in those areas, data shows that plastics are accumulating rapidly.
“Plastics are more or less everywhere,” said Aron Stubbins, professor of marine and environmental sciences, civil and environmental engineering, and chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern. “We’re finding them deposited in the Antarctic, in the Himalayas, carried by the wind, but to find them well-distributed throughout the ocean is surprising.”
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Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University
