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Despite its clear water, the water of the Balearic Islands also faces the plague of micro and nanoplastics. Gettyimages / Manuel Breva Colmeiro

Four sailors and four scientists surveyed near the Balearic Islands for one month as part of the 7th continent NGO project. These scientists focused on nanoplastics, whose composition and harmfulness pose many questions.

Nanoplastics populate the Mediterranean. A million times smaller than a crumb of bread. They come from the fragmentation of tons of plastics discharged into the sea . Alexandra Ter Halle, CNRS chemist and head of the mission, paints a disturbing picture of the situation:

" Every day, when we put a net in the water, we come out of the plastic. I'm working on nanoplastics, because there's really a scientific challenge, to understand their training and see how they form in the environment and what they become. And then, there is a potentiality of toxicity that is important with nanoplastics. "

Possibility of disrupting ecosystems

And these pieces of plastic are nests with bacteria on which Jean-François Ghiglione works: " Already, identify in the Mediterranean bacteria that are pathogenic, so that give diseases to certain animals including some fish. "

In addition these pieces of plastic transport these bacteria at the mercy of the current: " There is a general pollution with rafts that go everywhere. And so it's a new pollution that we did not imagine. And today we are very, very afraid of an organism going from one place to another, because it can disrupt an entire ecosystem in an important way, because it will settle there, then that he normally should not settle there. "

►Also read: The Tara mission goes on a hunt for microplastics on 10 rivers in Europe

For these researchers it is our consumption system that needs to be rethought. Nearly 80% of the plastic waste at sea is of terrestrial origin