"We Could Have Continued For Weeks"; Norway's Coast Guard Finds Plastic Swamping Remote Svalbard
The shore is hundreds of kilometers from nearest civilization, the Kiepert Island south in the Hinlopen Strait east of Spitsbergen. A polar bear is seen in distance. You could think this is about as far from anything as it is possible to get.
Last week, crewmembers from “KV Nordkapp” went on shore to the island. They were all shocked by the sight of the rubbish. “I could never believe it was this bad,” one of the conscripts said in a tweet posted by the Coast Guard. They describe the location’s remoteness as “the back side of the moon.”
About 8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the world oceans annually. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, there could be more plastic in oceans than fish.
EDIT
“In between timber and whalebones, we collected about six cubic meters of plastic, of which probably 95% origin from the fishing fleet,” the crew says. Fishing nets, plastic boxes, trawl nets, seine ropes, you find it all here.
“Some few hundred meters of the shoreline were cleaned. We could have continued for weeks.”
EDIT
https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/ecology/2018/08/i-could-never-believe-it-was-bad
