These Scientists Say It's Too Late to Rid the World's Oceans of Plastic

They traveled the globe for nine months, sailed across three oceans, and combed the beaches of some of the world's most idyllic islands — including Hawaii, Bermuda, and the Azores — looking for plastic.

Their voyage complete, the experts and volunteers of the Swiss foundation Race for Water have delivered a damning verdict.

"We cannot rid the oceans of the plastics they contain," said foundation director Anne-Cécile Turner. Turner said that such an ocean cleanup would be "scientifically and financially unrealistic."

"There are too many sources of pollution, and we don't possess the technology to rid the seas of all this plastic," she added.

Race for Water's high-tech trimaran sail boat set off from the southwestern French port of Bordeaux in March 2015, crossing the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans to take a closer look at the planet's five main "gyres" — the spiraling ocean currents that capture massive amounts of plastic waste.

"You often hear people talking about a so-called 'plastic continent,' but there's no such thing," said Kim Van Arkel, a young oceanographer who served as a scientific advisor on the expedition.

"It's more like a plastic soup, which is very difficult to detect because the particles are floating ten or so centimeters under the surface of the water," she explained.

Race for Water's experts made over a dozen stops on land during their nine-month voyage, studying the environmental damage to various coastlines. In some major cities, including Valparaiso, Shanghai, or Rio de Janeiro, scientists spoke with locals about ocean conservation. On the small islands and archipelagos they visited, experts collected samples of plastics for analysis.

"With the action of sun and salt, plastic disintegrates and becomes very hard to collect — even with tweezers," noted Van Arkel.

The oceanographer said many of the islands located near the gyres act as "filters" for the plastic, thus endangering their own coastline.

"I was shocked by some beaches, where the pollution is very visible, including pieces of crates, bits of vacuum cleaners, plastic bottles that disintegrate when you pick them up," said Van Arkel.

The researcher singled out the beach in Kamilo — south of Hawaii's largest island — as one of the most polluted environments witnessed along the trip.

"We couldn't believe it — in one of our samples, the concentration of plastic in the sand was very high," she said.

In 2014, 20-year-old Dutch inventor Boyan Slat suggested deploying a floating dam to collect ocean plastic — a solution that failed to convince the scientific community.

"Saying that we can clean up the oceans is very good for raising awareness among locals, because even [people living on] islands where there is barely any Internet access have heard of those projects," said Van Arkel.

"But from a scientific point of view, it's impossible, because even with a net or a giant vacuum — which we don't currently have — I don't see how you can collect plastics without also killing vital organisms such as plankton," she said.

For the foundation's experts, the solution to limiting ocean plastic is not found on or beneath the water, but is linked to better waste management on the land.

"The best we can do is to limit, to the best of our abilities, plastic pollution in the future," said Turner. "We have to inject more value into this waste, so that it doesn't end up in the rivers, and then in the oceans."

In some regions of the world, waste management is a daily concern, made worse by poverty and the pervasiveness of open-air garbage dumps.

One of the alternatives put forth by Race for Water is the creation of a "virtuous circle" around plastic, that would including plans to transform plastic debris into gas to meet energy needs.

Related: The Amount of Plastic in the Ocean Could Outweigh Fish by 2050

According to a report presented at the World Economic Forum in Davos by the Ellen MacArthur foundation, 8 millions tons of plastic end up in the ocean each year — the equivalent of one garbage truck of waste every minute.

"If nothing is done […] by 2050, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean," warned the report.

Single-use plastic packaging one of the most common types of ocean borne plastic pollution. According to the report, only 14 percent of packaging is properly recycled.

The samples collected by Race for Water's experts are currently being analyzed by three European universities in Switzerland and France.

"We will soon know more about the effects of this pollution on the larvae and young fish," said Arkel. "The test also measure the level of toxicity of micro-plastics, because those particles are like sponges that absorb other pollutants that are present in the oceans."

Several laboratories in the United States and in Australia are currently undertaking research on the harmful effects of micro-plastics.

Related: Here's Why Brushing Your Teeth Is Bad for the Oceans

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This article originally appeared on VICE News' French edition.