Understanding the Fragmentation Pattern of Marine Plastic Debris

The global estimation of microplastic afloat in the ocean is only approximately 1% of annual global plastic inputs. This reflects fundamental knowledge gaps in the transformation, fragmentation, and fates of microplastics in the ocean. In order to better understand microplastic fragmentation we proceeded to a thorough physicochemical characterization of samples collected from the North Artlantic subtropical gyre during the sea campaign Expedition seventh Continent in May 2014. The results were confronted with a mathematical approach. The introduction of mass distribution in opposition to the size distribution commonly proposed in this area clarify the fragmentation pattern. The mathematical analysis of the…