𝐄𝐱𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐬𝐮𝐧𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐛𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐜𝐞𝐚𝐧'𝐬 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 UV light from the sun slowly breaks down plastics on the ocean's surfaces. Floating microplastic is broken down into ever smaller, invisible nanoplastic particles that spread across the entire water column, but also to compounds that can then be completely broken down by bacteria. This is shown by experiments in the laboratory of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, NIOZ, on Texel. In the latest issue of Marine Pollution Bulletin, Ph.D. student Annalisa Delre and colleagues calculate that about two percent of visibly floating plastic may disappears from the ocean surface in this way each year. "This may seem small, but year after year, this adds up. Our data show that sunlight could thus have degraded a substantial amount of all the floating plastic that has been littered into the oceans since the 1950s," says Delre. Readmore; https://phys.org/news/2023-01-sunlight-plastics-ocean-surface.html