Along with the famous Turkish hamsi fish, the Black Sea is a host of abundant species. But like elsewhere, it faces the threat of pollution. A group of researchers from Karadeniz Technical University in Trabzon, a Turkish Black Sea province, recently discovered that an area stretching from its east to the west became the new home of 15 different types of plastics.

Plastic pollution emerges as a serious challenge for the world, with projections showing that the use of plastics would nearly triple in less than four decades. Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report published earlier this month shows that annual production of fossil-fuel-based plastics is set to top 1.2 billion tons by 2060 and waste will exceed 1 billion tons.

Infiltrating the most remote and otherwise pristine regions of the planet, microplastics have been discovered inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean and locked inside Arctic ice. The debris is estimated to cause the deaths of more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year. "Plastic pollution is one of the great environmental challenges of the 21st century, causing wide-ranging damage to ecosystems and human health," OECD chief Mathias Cormann said.

Since the 1950s, roughly 8.3 billion tons of plastic have been produced, with more than 60% of that tossed into landfills, burned or dumped directly into rivers and oceans. Some 460 million tonnes of plastics were used in 2019, twice as much as 20 years earlier. The amount of plastic waste has also nearly doubled, exceeding 350 million tons, with less than 10% of it recycled.

Dr. Yahya Terzi, a coordinator of the research on the Black Sea, says they combed an area starting from Artvin on the eastern coast to the shores of Istanbul in the west for their research and collected samples from 23 stations along the coast to examine the seawater for microplastics, particles smaller than 5 millimeters. Eventually, they came across 15 different "species" of plastics and Istanbul, which is also Turkey’s most populated city, had the highest concentration of microplastic pollution in the Black Sea, with 55 particles per cubic meter. This was 30 in the eastern parts of the Black Sea, while the region’s middle sections were less polluted.

Terzi told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Monday that polyethylene terephthalate or PET, a polymer resin better known for its use in plastic water bottles was the most common plastic they detected at sea. It is followed by polyethylene and polypropylene, a polymer that is used in everything, from clothing to camping gear to bags and containers of a wide range of consumer products.

He said that plastics turned into microplastics and were consumed by marine species, including hamsi. "Microplastics primarily affect zooplanktons which are food for hamsi in the food chain," he warned.

Last year, Greenpeace had warned about the plastic waste’s impact on the Black Sea, which was blamed for the deaths of hundreds of animals. Hundreds of dead ducks, seagulls and dolphins recently washed ashore near the Russian resort city of Sochi on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Microplastics were found in the stomachs of the dead animals, Greenpeace said in Moscow in March 2021, stressing that plastic particles are now the biggest problem among pollutants in the Black Sea. Russian authorities, on the other hand, had identified parasites in the animals' bodies as the cause of death, saying they had triggered various diseases. "There is no danger to the environment," the nature conservation agency Rosprirodnadzor stated.

According to Greenpeace, about 108 kilograms (238 pounds) of waste were collected during a cleanup on the shores of the Black Sea in 2020, 94% of which was plastic.