The oceans may contain much, much more plastic than previously thought

GristJuly 11, 2025News
Ocean diver among trash floating in water

In the oceans, the most widespread type of plastic pollution may be the kind you can’t see. A new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature estimates that the North Atlantic Ocean alone contains 27 million metric tons of nanoplastic — plastic particles 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. That figure is 10 times higher than previous estimates of plastic pollution of all sizes across all the world’s oceans, according to the study’s authors.