...“By factoring in the wind, which is fundamentally important to the physical behavior, you’re increasing the rigor of the science and doing something that has a major impact on the data,” Giora Proskurowski, an oceanographer at the University of Washington and one of the new study's authors, said in a press release.
Proskurowski and his team collected samples at several depths ranging from the surface to 100 feet down. They combined this data with wind measurements to develop a mathematical model that allows them to more accurately estimate plastic waste totals.
The team concluded that there is, on average, about two and a half times more plastic waste in the oceans than originally thought. And in very windy conditions, plastic estimates could be lowballed by as much as a factor of 27.
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