(Newser)
– The COVID-19 pandemic has aggravated the plague of plastic in the world’s oceans. Divers in the Philippines say that after returning to coral reefs when a national blockade was lifted, they were dismayed to find more plastic in the sea than they had ever seen before, including several surgical masks, reports the BBC. A dive professional says that in the first 10 minutes of diving off a coral reef in Batangas, southeast of Manila, he collected at least a dozen masks from the reef, some of which were covered with algae and have clearly been there for months.
Environmental groups warn that the plastic inside the masks is breaking down into microplastics, which are being consumed by marine life. They are asking the government to introduce stricter controls for the disposal of hospital waste. Researchers say Manila alone produced an extra 280 tons of this type of waste daily during the pandemic. And the problem is global: last year, in the first months of the pandemic, activists in France said they were finding large quantities of personal protective equipment in the Mediterranean and warned that soon there could be “more masks than jellyfish”, Guardian reports. They urged the public to adopt reusable masks instead of disposable ones. (Read more stories about masks.)