ST. PETERSBURG, September 17. /TASS/. The Barents Sea is most polluted among the Arctic seas along the Northern Sea Route, participants in the Trans Arctic 2019 expedition, which continued between July and September, told TASS.
"We could see on the surface of the Barents and Kara Seas very many plastic bags, bottles and jars - things, which are thrown from vessels," a representative of the Russian State Hudrometeorology University Alexandra Yershova said. "The pollution’s dynamics is similar to results outlined in European studies: the Barents Sea accumulates the waste from vessels or the waste, which straits bring there from the Atlantic Ocean."
"The share of waste is huge, while the water in the sea is clear, blue," she added. "The Siberian seas are much cleaner."
Scientists will finalize tests of probes, taken during the expedition, on October 25. They will receive unique data on the Northern Sea Route’s pollution on the eve of its active exploitation, the expert added.
Trans Arctic 2019 is a big project of the Russian hydrometeorology authority, RosHydroMet. The University’s specialists participated in the expedition’s fourth stage. During the 45-days’ voyage from Vladivostok to Murmansk they took water samples to analyze pollution along the Northern Sea Route and to understand how waste gets into the Arctic and what happens to it there.
Hazardous microplastics
Production of plastics has grown lately. More than half of it has been made over recent 15 years, as "we cannot imagine living without it - it’s convenient, light, enduring, in fact it’s eternal," the expert said, stressing the most hazardous are plastic fractions smaller than one millimeter.
"They, like a sponge, soak up everything from water - toxic and harmful substances, pesticides, heavy metals, pathogenic microbes. Filters - mollusks, fish fries - accumulate it, and this is how microplastics get into human’s food. Such filter-organisms are numerous in the Arctic - from microscopic crustaceans to whales, which filter up to 70 thousand liters of water at a time. Therefore, the Arctic is a region particularly vulnerable to microplastics pollution," she continued.
For the first time in the world
"We were the first to go along the entire Northern Sea Route from Vladivostok to Murmansk, where we took water samples in all seas: Okhotsk, Bering, Chukchi, East-Siberian, Laptev, Kara and Bering seas," the expert told TASS. "We have tested methods of taking samples and have come to a conclusion that it is not necessary to stop a vessel for taking samples. We have filtered more than 75,000 liters of water - this is how much water a whale swallows at a time."
The university will publish results after all the tests are made. Tests of bottom sediments are most effort-consuming, as they must be done only in sterile laboratory conditions.