Litter discovered in deepsea survey of one of Earth's final unexplored realms

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/25/litter-deepsea-survey-earth-unexplored


Deep-sea pollution at 2,300 meters has arrived before the James Cook survey. Photograph: NERC

On 15 August 1934, two adventurers squeezed into a tiny metal capsule and became the first people to see another world. Their names were William Beebe and Otis Barton, and the world that they saw was the deep ocean, when they dived more than half a mile down in their bathysphere near Bermuda. They were the first to journey beyond the sunlit waters of the upper ocean, and Barton later commented that "no human eye had seen this part of the planet before us, this pitch-black country lighted only by the pale gleam of an occasional spiralling shrimp".

For the past two weeks, my colleagues and I have been exploring that pitch-black country further, by sending a remotely operated vehicle called Isis to the bottom of the Cayman Trough from the UK's royal research ship, James Cook. We have surveyed the slopes of an underwater mountain twice as high as Ben Nevis, but whose summit still lies one-and-a-half miles beneath the waves. We have also investigated the world's deepest undersea vents, three miles down in a volcanic rift on the ocean floor. And our journey has brought us face-to-face with new species of deep-sea creatures, from colonies of teeming glorious life in the abyss.


Deep-sea pollution at 5,000 metres. Photograph: NERC

The area where we are working is part of the UK's deep-sea territory, which covers an area 27 times greater than all of our land above the waves. Besides finding out what is in that unexplored realm, the goal of our expedition is to learn more about the geological forces that shape our world, the processes that govern the chemistry of the oceans, and how species disperse and evolve in the dark depths.

But while we have been among the first to see this particular part of our planet, we have found that human rubbish has arrived here before us. The list of litter we have seen so far during dives includes two soft drink cans, one beer bottle, and a rusty food tin. And ours is just one expedition, glimpsing only one tiny nook of the vast ocean depths.

[Demeter]

1. No matter what happens to the planet

Alien explorers will know we were here....that's immortality!

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2. i'd like to buy the world a coke{that's the real thing}

[Demeter]

3. Thanks! I needed that smile and giggle

Having a rough morning....and it's only 8:46am...it's gonna be a looooong week.

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4. ...

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5. Today's trash is tomorrow's artifact.