Fishing industry, scientistist discover that plastic destroying ecosystems and why plastic is

threatning inexcessible parts of the world:

Last time I travelled to Australia to discover how plastic is affecting sea birds.

To Indonesia to witness the problem in its rivers. I just can't believe how people.

And I met the people inventing solutions to this global crisis.

What is this made of? It's made of seaweed.

Now I'm continuing my journey by investigating the impact from industries that rely on our oceans.
The staggering rise in our global consumption of plastic is down to the fact that it's cheap to produce
light to transport and incredibly strong. This makes it very attractive to big industry, not least those
working on the ocean who need a material that can cope with the phenomenal power of the sea.
The fishing industry puts more plastic in the sea than any other sector. Fishing is one of the largest
and oldest industries in the world. It employs 200 million people and nearly every net rope and line
used in commercial fishing is made of plastic. Over 1,000,000 tonnes of plastic fishing gear is lost or
dumped at sea each year, and the consequences for marine life are catastrophic.

New England on the East Coast of America:

I'm heading to one of the busiest fishing grounds in the world in New England on the East Coast of
America. I'm meeting a search and rescue team to better understand how fishing gear affects sea
life. They're all getting together for the for the morning briefing. So I'm just.

Brian Sharpe leads this team of highly trained experts and volunteers. Seeing everybody walking
around with lists, lists, lists, heads down lists.

Yes, well it is. Yes. I mean because it is a massive amount of equipment, personnel just the whole
coordination of this. You know, it's something that we only get certain opportunities to do so we
want to want to. Make sure that nothing is forgotten.

Our first call is to rescue a grey seal pup entangled in fishing net. It's been spotted on a sandbank 2
miles off the coast and the team have to work quickly to try to save it.

Step there, yeah.

It's the job of biologist Misty Niemeyer. To discover the cause of death for all the seals brought in by
the rescue team. I joined the examination of another seal who suffered a fatal neck wound.

Well, we always want to, Oh yeah, there it is.

Hang on though. Is that what the rope?

Did that was all done lightly from this line? It somehow got this around its neck and then it started to
grow and then it. Started to slowly cut. Into around the neck, so we'll want to do.

It's so young, or how many, how old how?

Old is this who?

Was probably born sometime in May or June, so it's only a few months.
Old, I mean, these are intelligent social sentient mammals. This pup was in. How much pain?

Something like this where it's it's around your neck where you're trying to breathe and where you're.
Trying to eat. And you're constantly moving and swimming that it's probably constantly painful. So
we can just try to slide. This off if we can.

Think it will.

Think so.

Oh deary me.

You guys are so amazing and pragmatic, just holding its little head.

Just sent me off.

Yeah, it it can be difficult sometimes.

Oh dear.

It's such a young little thing, you know, it doesn't even have a chance at.

Life at all?

She's picking my words. They're all breaking my heart. This whole situation is breaking my heart. Can
you believe this is what goes on when we carry on with our? Lives, you know? And then they've got
to go back out there and keep going and keep going. And it just never stops. It's too much.

Entanglements are affecting animals all over the world. Killing an estimated 300,000 marine
mammals a year and over 400,000 sea birds. Many of these animals have been caught in plastic
fishing gear. Whales in particular, are badly affected because they migrate through some of the
busiest fishing grounds. One species of whale is so under threat it's being pushed to the brink of
extinction. The North Atlantic right whale. To reduce the number of white whale entanglements,
local authorities here have imposed strict fishing bans at the peak of their migration. And fishermen
have also made significant changes to their fishing gear. But with more rules and restrictions on the
horizon. A backlash is brewing.

We've got so much regulation jammed up our ***. We'll watch them in. You're going to put them
out of business, not one of the boats in this harbour has. Caught a right whale ever.

I tracked down another fisherman, Nick. Yes, I'm Liz.

Fisherman:

Hi Liz, excuse me you come on.

Very nice to meet. Permission to come aboard.

Nick Mooto is keen to explain the struggle the industry is facing and why plastic rope is so vital to
their work.

Can we see one of?

Your lobster pot.

Yeah, systems here.

So most of our end lines are 36 metres.

Lobster fishing involves a lobster pot thrown to the bottom of the sea, attached to a boy at the
surface by a very long length of plastic rope. It stays in the water for several days until the fishermen
return to collect.

Try to grab it from the ends and. Try it oh God.

I can't chubby how.

How heavy is that?

It's probably 65, almost 70 pounds.

The plastic rope Nick uses can hold the weight of a family car. It's twice as strong as traditional
natural fibre rope.

So I actually have some of the natural fibre rope we've got. Some of it right here. This is the old
hemp rope so.

Good old fashioned hemp OK.

Did you see when I opened the valve?

How long did that take?

Not long enough.

Show me that with one of your plastic ropes, then it's the same.

Diameter, same same diameter rope Yep, and as you can see. There's no way.

There's no way.

We need to make sure that we have the ability to get our gear up off the bottom of the ocean. I have
hundreds of thousands of dollars it and wrapped up in commercial fishing. My my wife, myself, my
daughter, my 3 crewmen that I and their families rely on me being able to make a living on the
water.

It's estimated that 3,000,000 miles of this virtually unbreakable plastic rope is used on this coastline
alone. But it's this same rope that causes terrible harm to migrating whales. Thousands of these
ropes hang vertically in the water, creating a deadly obstacle course. Despite their incredible size
and strength, the only way to free the whales once entangled is to attempt an incredibly dangerous
rescue mission.

So Liz, this is our team.

Scott Landry:

One of the few people skilled enough and brave enough to do this is Scott Landry. He and his team
are on call seven days a week, patrolling an area over twice the size of Britain.

This was on a humpback whale and we worked on Saturday to remove this from this.

Whale, you've literally got the whole lobster pot gear. You've got the boy at the top, the rope that
extends down to the bottom of.
The ocean, it's just rope, a pot and a buoy. And it can cause a really complicated problem.

Scott recorded his latest mission on Headcam.

There's the.

Right here, right here, right here, coming out.

And there's that boy. And the grappling hook. He doesn't want the boy he wants the line. That's
underneath the boy.

A yellow rope is hooked onto the fishing gear that's wrapped around the whales tail so they can
edge themselves closer to one of the largest and most powerful animals on Earth.

So the whale is carrying on.

Oh, I can see the other rope training. This is all this stuff this is.

See all that's all. Just prop radio. That's exactly.

All this stuff.

This easy. And so, right now they're letting the line payout.

And the whale is dragging the boat at a fierce rate.

You're going, yes, you're being pulled by the whale and you gotta.

Let that whale take you.

Yeah, and the whales going to react automatically.

I mean I can't get over what I'm. Seeing alright.

Well, you need a knife.

It's an incredibly dangerous procedure. Last year, Scott's friend and colleague died while trying to
rescue a whale.

And so, as the whales at the surface, we draw ourselves closer and. Closer to the. Whale, you can
see the wound and the rope going right into.

Yeah, yeah, the rope is plastic. It's not hemp, which is the reason why the whales are in such a.

And you can notice.

Pickle, yeah so you could see.

Our support boat in the background. Yeah, alright, so right here. Grab that foot. So now on the end
of that long pole is a hook shaped knife that is extremely sharp.

We're working our way up.

After hours of backbreaking work, they skillfully released the boy. The plastic fishing rope is cut
away. Finally, setting the animal free.

So it's now going to be free to swim away. This animal has a lot of work to do on its own. Now
nothing we can do for it, we cannot give it medication. No palliative care, and so I can't say that this
whale for sure. Is out of the woods.
It's estimated that between half and 2/3 of whales in these fishing grounds have been entangled at
least once in their lifetime.

Whales are running from their breeding grounds to their feeding grounds, and they essentially are
running a gauntlet. This is where it becomes extremely difficult for, say, a local fisherman to buy into
this issue.

Are you finding that the majority of entanglements are caused by active fishing gear?

Yes, this this was gear that was catching food for people. Now getting to the point of catching
whatever it is that you want on the sea floor or anywhere in the ocean without rope. That is, that's
the Holy Grail.

Globally, there are fewer than 30 small rescue teams like this one and an estimated population of
2,000,000 whales. This can never be a long term solution. The only way to stop entanglements is to
remove those vertical ropes from the water column. That's the only way. They're going to really
protect whales here. Some of the fishermen here are open to finding out about alternative fishing
techniques.

Dave Cassoni from the Massachusetts Lobstermen Association: (Boston)

Dave Cassoni from the Massachusetts Lobstermen Association has agreed to test a new fishing
system that doesn't rely on floating vertical ropes, but he has his reservations.

Marco Flag is the engineer who's designed the new fishing gear. His invention keeps the ropes
attached to the lobster pot, safely, out of harm's way. It's only released when the fisherman wants to
haul up his trap.

First, Dave has to set up the new system:

So this line. Has to go inside here and now. This has to go in these. Gargantuan holes I think this is
very time consuming and difficult in sea conditions time.

It's tricky, no? I can see that with everything else you've got to do new technology, Dave.

Now I'm.

Marco has it. He's got to attach it to. That trap now.

It works by storing the rope and surface boys that would normally float in the water in a container
attached to the lobster pot.

You guys have gotta all be away. When this goes back in, listen.

Oh my Tate, where do you need us? To be.

Up in the wheel.

It sort of wants to go upright.

Is it going to be the price?

All of this up here, yeah?

Here it goes. Here it goes. Here it goes.

The pots can now sit on the sea bed without any plastic ropes, causing an obstacle to marine life. But
with no visible boys, Dave needs to use a GPS system to find his. Morning, you're going to the right,
or you can do a circle the other way we need.

A transmitter on the boat sends a signal down to the container which should trigger the release of
the rope and the boys.

Glorified others are vilified. My saying in any way, shape or manner that I endorse ropeless fishing
will vilify me with the industry because the industry is so opposed as a pop up boy it will work. Is it
practical? No, because it is too time consuming and our business time is money.

Dave isn't alone. Many other lobstermen are sceptical about the new technologies design and its
high costs. But approximately 340 million lobsters are caught globally every year. That's millions of
miles of rope across our oceans. Potentially entrapping whales. An effective Roper system could not
only protect whales all around the world, but the livelihoods of fishermen, too.

Mike Lane: Lobsterman and Engineer

I've heard about a different design, the brainchild of Lobsterman Mike Lane. Hello hello I'm looking
for. Mike hi, I'm Liz. He's on the phone.

OK, something's talking to something. This seems to be a sturdier and more feasible design. It takes
just seconds to load and the release and collection of the rope and boys is much more
straightforward.

Solution you gotta be responsible for what you do. I'm Like I don't, you know I don't wanna be
responsible to killing a whale. They're Beautiful Creatures. We see them out there all the time.
They're they're amazing and I don't want my boy wrapped around 1:00 and I don't want people not
to buy lobsters because I think I'm in a tangle in the web so. I want to solve the problem.

Perhaps this exciting collaboration between lobstermen and engineer can finally. Put an end to the
threat of whale entanglements and save the northern right whale from extinction.

I feel like people portray fishermen as but just a bunch of people hate the environment. And we.
Want to rape the ocean of everything that's worth? And we're not like that. They don't have a
college degree. I don't have an education. I don't have anything. Else I can do. My whole life has
been built around lobstering and that's what. I have invested in. So what do you do when if? Your
job is taken. Away from you guys. You gotta restart your. Life. How long will the bank let me go
without paying my mortgage? So the sooner I get this finished and done with the better off I'm going
to be.

I am really glad I got to meet Mike today just before leaving Cape Cod. He's really struck a chord with
me, and I think it's because. Amidst all of the contention and complex issues and the discussions,
which of course need to happen, he just decided to get on with it from the start. To take it into his
own hands and. Be a fisherman. That's finding a solution to a fishing industry problem. I've spent the
last nine months researching this plastic crisis and what's becoming clear is that the very qualities
that have made plastic such a central part of our lives are also those that make it so destructive to
marine life. Plastic is one of the most durable materials on the planet. Virtually every single piece of
plastic that's ever entered the ocean. Is still there. In fact, Plastic has recently been found at the
bottom of the Marianas Trench. At a depth of seven miles. And scientists have now discovered that
plastic is threatening one of the Ocean's most fragile ecosystems, coral reefs. I'm heading to a part of
the world known as the Coral Triangle, an area of coral reefs that stretches over 2.3 million square
miles from Indonesia to the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, to the Solomon Islands.

Coral Triangle

Jolie Lam – Assisant Professor

I'm joining assistant professor Jolie Lam, an expert in coral ecology. Who is here to study? Why
plastic is so? Lethal to reefs. Corals are extraordinary animals. Our oceans contain over 9,000,000
species of them and the reefs they create are the largest living structures on Earth. Coral reefs are
the nurseries of the sea. Providing shelter for a myriad of small fish and feeding grounds for a whole
host of species. But with these precious ecosystems already straining under the pressures of our
modern world, plastic is posing yet another threat.

As as almost as much plastic as there is sea squirts isn't.

There, yeah, there's sachets.

It's definitely not a clean body of water that we're diving. In today, is it?

Definitely not.

As soon as I'm under the surface, it's clear that this reef is in trouble. These corals are already
immensely stressed due to rising water temperatures from global warming. And all around me
plastic is now covering these vulnerable animals. I helped Jolie to collect samples of the plastic. She
believes that another danger is threatening the coral.

Never ended, but then more than anything, it's these flipping things. Coffee sachet softener sachet.
What the heck is that? A cheese sachet, a soup sauce sachet sachet after sachet after sachet after
sachet?

I think there is a tea or coffee. Did you? The little juvenile recruits on that bottle, yeah?

There's something really powerful about seeing a really old bottle with a coral growing at the neck
of. It it's almost like nature's doing absolutely everything it can to try and survive this mess and yet,
right? Beside that little bit of life growing out of plastic, there's a whole area that is dead.

And this is just one of the sites, so there are many islands out here that have much more plastic than
this. There can be more plastic than this.

We head to a nearby island to examine what might be living on the surface of the plastic we've
collected.

Jolie's new research has LED her to believe that lethal doses of bacteria are being transported on
the.

Plastics like this one here. It's just full. Of these little pits and pores, and even on a bottle, if you look
up very closely you can see all these nooks and crannies, so it's about the texture of plastic, yes.

The surface of plastic provides the perfect home for bacteria to thrive. One of the most dangerous
bacteria for coral is found in a group called Vibrio. One strain of which causes cholera in humans.
So what we're going to do is do a scraping of what's on this plastic and we're going to test whether
or not it has vibrio. And Vibrio is a pathogen, which means it can cause disease. And corals and
shrimp and oysters. OK, so which sample would you like to start with? Let's start with the rice sauce.

And what's the liquid that's in?

Here, so this is just a filtered sterile seawater, OK? Just want to turn it into a nice green pea soup.
Oh, that's.

Brown soup, but it's definitely soupy.

And you just put four drops here and four drops here. Perfect.

Jolie uses a bacteria testing kit. If a particular toxin produced by Vibrio is present, a red line will
appear in the small window.

Oh wait, look.

Now is that Vibrio is that.

Oh Oh my God. That's that's from the.

Sack that's the sack. Yeah, this one is light too.

So what does this mean for this reef?

It's essentially a whole new way to transport diseases that we never even thought about until this
year.

Until this year.

It's not clear yet why potentially lethal doses of bacteria thrives on plastic. But the result is that
plastic floating in our oceans. Is turning into disease carrying rafts? Once this plastic sinks and
becomes entangled in the coral, it cuts into it like an infected knife delivering bacteria. The open
wound. Coral tissue is slowly destroyed as the bacteria moves across it. In the same way that
gangrene spreads across human flesh. This newly discovered threat paints a harrowing picture for
the future of our reefs.

We looked at 124,000 corals with and without plastic and when we see the plastic on the coral the
likelihood of disease goes up to 89% likelihood. Yes.

89%.

Mind-blowing I'm absolutely gobsmacked. I thought I knew how much plastic was affecting marine
life. I didn't for a second think it could also be a carrier of disease.

But there is a glimmer of hope. Some reefs are showing fewer signs of disease. We swim out to one
of them to investigate. Here the coral seems to be faring better. And it's even supporting an array of
sea life. Jolie has been investigating possible reasons for this. As we head back to the coast, a
Meadow of sea grass is growing in the shallows. Jolie thinks that this sea grass could be contributing
to the health of the reef.

The first line of defence.

When you have seagrass coral reef it it physically traps the plastic.

Before, yeah, you can see it physically. Slowing the water down and also. Trapping it like fingers.
But seagrass may be doing much more than simply acting as a physical barrier.

What we found recently is that the seagrass reduces harmful. And for science it is seagrass can
actually kill bacteria that's harmful to people and also marine organisms. By 50%

50%.

So this is really seriously important stuff.

Seagrass meadows are not only trapping the plastic, they're also disinfecting it. It's thought that the
grass could contain antibiotic properties that kills off the bacteria. More research needs to be done,
but this is a promising discovery. It may be that nature will provide some solutions of its own to the
plastic crisis.

Trust is on every continental shelf except for Antarctica. It is one of the most important ecosystems,
and so if we can start showing that it's important for small islands like this, but also where I come
from and where you come from, then that's the best way we can move forward.

When it comes to other.

Global crises, when it comes to climate change. We have been studying that for decades now. We
are only just beginning to really pay proper attention to plastic pollution in our oceans and.

There is hope with the sea grass. That can't be the only solution, it won't. It won't be the only
solution. We have to find other answers and we have to find them very, very quickly. On the closest
island to the reef, villagers are trying to come up with their own solution. They're calling it the
garbage bank.

In the last 20. Five years to dispose. Of the plastic people here are just dumping it into.

The ocean, yes.

Jamal Jumper - Proffessor

I meet Professor Jamal, jumper, a marine scientist who's going to show me how the system works.

This here is a solution. A simple solution for them to get. Away from this.

Garage and they have no other options.

They haven't had any assistance from the government or anyone else about. Where to put it? So
where else? Would they put it correct?

But for them it is not a problem because they don't see that yet as a disaster. They don't see this is
going to reduce or affect their livelihood.

The villagers here are taking things into their own hands. A Community Enterprise project has begun
to make it worthwhile for locals to be more careful with their plastic.

Hello hello so So what is this?

Place this is called kind of garbage bag.

The bank collects used plastic from the neighbourhood, paying people by the weight they hand over.

The people in.

The village get credit for the plastic they bring, but then what happens to this plastic and then do
they get money?

Magasa City – Sorting Plastic:

OK, so then they bring it to the city magasa. For it, yes, they get cash basically. So in Macasa there is
a central collection.

This garbage bank is the first link in a chain that's making plastic waste valuable.

Thank you bye bye.

To find out if the system is effective, I follow the chain to Makassar city, the provincial capital.

Good afternoon, yeah.

I'm looking for nasrun nasrun hello.

Nasrun runs the facility here, sorting the plastic that arrives from 600 small garbage bags.

Right?

5 tonnes a day day. So that makes me think two things. There's so much plastic to collect, but people
are doing it.

People are collecting.

It for you and bringing it to you. Ah cups. I saw them preparing this on the island. Once the plastic is
sorted by type.

Wrapping, wrapping, wrapping, wrapping.

This is all bottles. Various companies arrive to buy it.

Astron, where are these bottles going now?

In any.

So I've just spoken to the guy who's buying these bottles and he's allowing me to follow them to his
establishment.

The next link in the. Chain we travel to a much bigger warehouse on the outskirts of the city.

So this is it.

This is.

Your operation.

The owner, Marwan Hassan, has been buying and selling used plastic bottles for 9 years. Mawani's
team are processing thousands of bottles a day.

How big is this warehouse? How many sacks of plastic bottles do you have inside that warehouse
right now?

30 tonnes. You've got a full house, full bottles, just just bottles.
Yeah, special bottle.

Here the bottles are compacted. Before they sold to a much bigger company in Jakarta, who shreds
them up to be sold again and turned into lower grade plastic products like carpet backing.

But you know what?

This mass of plastic? Is being dealt with 30 tonnes of plastic bottles are not in the oceans because of
this guy?

Having grown up in Macassar and seeing the change with the plastic. Do you think that your business
and other businesses like yours are making a difference?

Sam masakan

Appanna Burka mala mala dari dari.

So even warehouses like this and the amount of.

Plastic you take in.

It's not making a difference you don't think.

I'm feeling a little bit stupid right now and. Painfully naive. Like when I met Nasrun, I was so elated.
Uh, when I thought that ohh gosh, OK. There's a solution here. There's an answer and, and of course
they're doing something. It's better than doing nothing. But what I've just learned in here is that it's
not breaking the back of the plastics problem. This isn't making a difference. Like what does that
mean about how bad, how bad this is? The reality is there simply aren't enough facilities here to
keep up with this relentless deluge of plastic. But this isn't just Indonesia's problem across the world.
Only 11% of plastic is recycled. Currently the focus is still on producing new plastic rather than
recycling it. Something doesn't change. It's estimated that annual plastic production in 2050. Will
have increased by 500%. As scientists worked tirelessly to better understand this crisis, a new plastic
threat, possibly the most serious yet is emerging. Trillions of microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic,
some no bigger than a speck of dust floating in our oceans. These microplastics are even transported
to the top of the world. Where I'm heading on my final expedition?

Longyearbyen - Norway

We're in Longyearbyen, the northernmost town in the world on the Norwegian archipelago of
Svalbard, 1300 kilometres that way.

Is the North Pole.

We're heading deeper inside the Arctic Circle. It's as untouched and remote a place as I think I've
ever been. And yet we're here to investigate a plastic threat.

That's reached even here.

It's the middle of summer, so. You get 20. 4 hours of daylight here, which is. Why at 2:30 in? The
morning it looks like this and it might be. A little bit. Hard to get to sleep on the journey up.

Amy Lusher – Expert in Micro Plastics

I'm joining Doctor Amy Lusher, a leading expert on microplastics, on a three day journey, to one of
the most extraordinary. Places on earth. The Arctic is home to some of our most astounding wildlife.
Magnificent polar bears roamed the ice. Walruses haul out on the beaches. And majestic narwhals
and belugas hunt in the freezing waters we sail for 9 hours to a remote Arctic beach. Miles from any
human habitation.

Where exactly are we?

We're on a spit of land. It's called principal's fuel land. And are you there? Is the North Atlantic
leading into the Norwegian Sea, and up there is the Arctic.

We are.

In a very remote part of the planet. And yet The plastic reaches. Even here, tomato ketchup. Good
Lord.

Yeah, that's the tomato ketchup with.

I mean, I can't believe the nozzle and the bottle separated at whatever stage it's obscene.

Up here in the Arctic, the plastic becomes really, really brittle quite quickly and they just start to
break.

Down so yeah, it just snaps in your hand.

The plastics dumped on this beach have been transported by ocean currents that act like huge
conveyor belts. Much of this plastic has travelled here from Northern Europe. Finding big pieces of
plastic in one of the most remote places on Earth is alarming enough.

You take this and fill it up with.

Some nice clean water, but Amy is much more concerned with the smaller fragments. We take a
closer look at the sand.

So now we're just going to take escape of the top layer of sand and put the sand in carefully. And if
we tape it so it comes out of this corner, it will. Be a lot. Easier for us.

There's loads of bits of plastic floating. On the top we call.

Them microplastics, normally it's anything less than one millimetre in size, is a microplastic.

Microplastic much of it is a result of larger pieces breaking up at sea. But it's also coming from some
more surprising sources. Microscopic fibres are being washed out of our synthetic clothing. In
August 2018, A-Team at Plymouth University in the UK revealed that.

In each synthetic.

Wash cycle more than 700,000 microplastic fibres are released into the environment. Microbeads, in
toothpaste and face scrubs are being washed down the sink and rain is flushing tiny plastic
fragments from our car tyres into drains. It just keeps getting more and more complex. I've been
focusing on the big bits of plastic and and and how they're affecting wildlife. This is.

Overwhelming to think about all of this stuff.

It's a little.
Bit scary when you think about it. Originally they used to say the only places that we hadn't found
microplastics or the Arctic and Antarctic, but so it's in front of us here.

Scientists now believe that the Arctic has some of the highest levels of microplastics in the world.
And it's found its way into the food chain in a recent study at Plymouth Marine Laboratory, scientists
injected a fluorescent marker into microplastics. They discovered that tiny plankton are ingesting
them. They then focused their research up the food chain to small fish, mussels, clams and oysters.
And discovered that they were ingesting microplastics too. The concern now is that microplastics are
heading further up the food chain. To some of the biggest ocean predators. This island is home to a
colony of walruses.

This one's rolling into the water.

And Amy wants to find out if microplastics have made their way into their diet.

What a sight for sore eyes.

This is the first time anyone has investigated this.

I'm just watching these stunning juveniles, just folking. It's the only word I can think of when you
look at them. They're joyful here.

Despite weighing over a tonne, walruses mostly feed on small mussels and clams living on the ocean
floor. They dive and forage along the seabed, rooting through the sediment with their snouts. They
can eat. Up to 6000 mussels and clams in a day.

And they've noticed us and they don't seem. Tense or nervous about our presence.

And it's just.

Such a beautiful sight.

To discover if walruses are ingesting microplastics, Amy needs to analyse their faeces poop.

Come back.

Can smell it from here.

This is a huge one.

That that must be the dominant male. It's gotta be.

You've got a little fibre.

In it and Microsoft.

Already there are signs of microplastics. And back in the lab, it doesn't take long to confirm what
Amy has suspected.

So I found a fibre.

I can see it I.

Can see it say if you look down here you'll see a lot clearer, so that is a fragment of plastic and.

OK.

From the shape of.

Because it's so much.

It you can see that it's.

Oh red.

Yeah, it's bright red and you can see that it's piece of plastic that's been shaved.

The first evidence of.

Plastic inside the faeces of walruses in the Arctic. Yeah, is this plastic that's coming the whole way up
the food chain from the plankton to the.

Muscle to the walrus?

We know that the muscles have the plastic in their whole nature in. The way that. The walrus feeds.
It's very likely that it's come from its prey.

So that's it. In the Arctic, one of the most remote, seemingly pristine places in the world, there is
plastic from the very bottom of the food chain. All the. Way up to the. Top, what does that mean for
such? Precious, fragile ecosystem like the Arctic that's already under tremendous pressure from
mankind in the way we.

Live more plastic enters the environment. There's going to be more plastic available for animals to
ingest, and we're going. To see more plastic. Than anything else inside the animals, and I think that's
quite shocking.

With evidence of microplastics throughout the entire food chain, it raises the question. What effect
is it having on us? Scientists have now discovered that plastic is entering our bodies from a whole
host of different sources. From the air we breathe. The water we drink. The food we eat. The
research about how all this plastic may be affecting us is in its infancy. But the evidence we have
about how it affects marine life paints a disturbing picture. As the ocean plastic crisis becomes ever
more apparent. More and more people are taking action to become part of the solution. All across
the globe, people are giving up single use plastic items like straws, takeaway cups and plastic bags,
and they're heading to the water's edge. The clean up efforts taking. All around the world are
incredible, but the thought I just can't get out of my head. We can try to clean up our rivers and
coastlines. We can even try to clean up the plastic that's far out at sea, but unless we turn off the
plastic tap, the unrelenting deluge that enters our oceans every day simply will never stop. If we
don't. The result will be catastrophic for all marine life from the smallest creature to the largest
mammal. Our planet depends on a healthy and thriving ocean for its very survival. We can do this.
We can save our oceans. But we need. To act. Before it's too late.