HOTMIC: No, it's not what you think

Plastics found intact, in the ocean, from 1988 and 1996

Whenever we hear the words "hot mic", we think of a microphone that is still live and some politician or other saying something they should not have and it's recorded for posterity.

But the HOTMIC I'm referring to in this blog is the Horizontal and Vertical Oceanic Distribution, Transport, and Impact of Microplastics.

For some reason, we humans can't seem to properly dispose of our plastic waste.  The result is the overwhelming amount of plastics that are being carried into the ocean and waterways and being consumed by sea creatures of all types.

I am referring specifically to an article published on June 11, 2020, entitled:  

"Persistence of plastic debris and its colonization by bacterial communities after two decades on the abyssal seafloor" by S. Krause, et al. in Scientific Reports,10,9484. 
According to their research:
"Currently, 5–13 Mt [metric tons] of plastic debris are believed to enter the oceans every year..."
The authors further state that "Currently, more than 60% of all debris present in the oceans is plastic with increasing trend so far". 
Obviously, this can't continue unabated without severe consequences to our planet and our ocean life.  Single use plastics--including water bottles, and particularly, packaging--are quite simply destroying our planet, one metric ton at a time.
There are two organizations working very hard to clean the plastic out of the oceans: 4Ocean (4ocean.com) and The Ocean Cleanup (theoceancleanup.com).
What can we do?  For one thing, we can donate to these worthy causes to provide the money to help them clean up the plastics in the oceans.  We can stop and think before we use any single use plastics for water or shopping and, if we do, we can make sure they're disposed of properly.  And we can make sure all plastics are properly disposed of.
Plastics last forever so we need to dispose of plastics knowing that they won't decompose.