The primary source of plastic debris washing up on the shores of Seychelles’ beaches primarily originate from Indonesia, followed by India and Sri Lanka, a new study by the University of Oxford shows.
Called ‘Sources of marine debris for Seychelles and other remote islands in the western Indian Ocean’, the study is the first to produce a quantitative estimate of the sources of plastic debris washing up on these shores.
In a press release from the Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF), the lead author of the research, Noam Vogt-Vincent outlined that the majority of plastic debris originating from the land was from distant countries, including Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka.
“However, a staggering number of bottles found on Aldabra were from countries like China and Thailand, and no realistic current or wave patterns could account for the transport of this litter to Aldabra. It is, therefore, more likely that most of these bottles were illegally discarded from ships crossing the Indian Ocean, rather than directly from the mainland,” he said.
The remote Aldabra atoll is one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Seychelles, an archipelago in the western Indian Ocean.