MOSCOW, December 14. /TASS/. The heavy pollution of Norway's coastal waters with microplastics, which the Gulf Stream brings there from the US and UK coasts, may become a reason to stop fishing in a few years, representative of the Academy of Sciences' Clean Arctic - Vostok-77 expedition Maxim Tokarev said at the TASS press center.
"Here is what happens now in Norway because of the litter and microplastics. They will probably have to stop the coastal salmon fishing within a few years due to very high concentrations of microplastics. Most likely, detailed tests will show the microplastics concentration at more than half a million particles per cubic kilometer of water in the main fjords, bays and near river mouths, since over recent five decades the Gulf Stream has brought there thousands of tons of plastics of all fractions. This could ruin the economy of that country, where about a dozen percent of the national product is associated with fishing and with production of aquatic biological resources," he said.
Salmon is an important part of the diet of Norway's indigenous people - the Sami, who are about 60,000, he stressed. Their main occupations are reindeer husbandry and fishing in estuaries and bays.
"The shrinking access to salmon will affect traditional economic activities. Some of the Sami will have to move to cities to earn living, thus causing a decrease in the number of Sami native speakers and culture in just a generation. Fortunately, the Sami in the Murmansk Region do not depend that much on fishing in the Barents Sea, but they anyway are concerned about the water pollution problem," he added.
The Clean Arctic - Vostok-77 expedition has discovered plastic objects of British and North European origins on the northernmost and easternmost islands of the Barents Sea, he continued. The microplastics samples, taken in coastal waters from the Rybachy Peninsula to Teriberka, had the highest concentrations of microplastics, which increase towards the west and decrease towards the east. The scientists explain this by saying the Gulf Stream collects littered water from the eastern shores of the United States, the northern shores of Britain and the European Union and brings it to the Norwegian and Barents Seas, which in a sense are a dead end.