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Environment

Ocean pollution foils search for plane

Nature volume 509, page 288 (2014)Cite this article

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An international search to locate missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared on 8 March, is under way in the southern Indian Ocean. Various objects seen floating in the ocean and washed up on the shores of western Australia briefly raised hopes that traces of the plane had been found. Unfortunately, such litter is ubiquitous in the oceans.

Finding traces of humanity in the sea has never been easier, thanks to sophisticated technology. But finding evidence of the plane's whereabouts is proving much more difficult — despite numerous and ongoing research successes with the marine-observation systems employed (see www.ioc-goos.org).

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  1. United Nations Environment Program, Nairobi, Kenya

    Keith Alverson

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  1. Keith Alverson
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Correspondence to Keith Alverson.

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Alverson, K. Ocean pollution foils search for plane. Nature 509, 288 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/509288d

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  1. Jean SmilingCoyote

    I'm glad to see this letter published. The same thoughts occurred to me, too, while watching the TV coverage. I wonder what proportions of ocean litter come from the various sources: flotsam, jetsam, land-sourced runoff (from personal or landfill sources?), etc. Individuals, governments, and companies need to start taking responsibility for not littering &#8211 the land as well as the oceans. Also, I'd like to add that when we allow settlement and development in coastal areas vulnerable to tsunamis, we're also creating a hazard to the ocean in the form of "litter" when the tsunami washes it all away. We saw that on a huge scale in Japan. On a smaller scale, riparian flooding does the same thing when drainage reaches the ocean with all its debris.

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