Измерили контаминацию проб воды на микропластик, и оказалось, что большая часть частиц прилетела с самого корабля.
The team tracked contamination by collecting fibres from every possible source of contamination on the vessel including clothing worn by both the science and boat teams, sail bags and tarps, sail and equipment control lines as well as interior textiles. By doing so, they created a catalogue to which every fibre and fragment found in environmental samples was first compared. If there was a match, that exact source of procedural contamination was noted. If there was not a match, that microparticle was considered pollution.
The research found that when robust anti-contamination protocols were not used when taking water samples (using a metal bucket for surface samples and a Niskin bottle for mid-water column samples), 71.4% of the microparticles in the samples were contamination; similarly, when anti-contamination protocols were not used when processing water samples (using a vacuum filtration method), 68.4% of the microparticles in the samples were contamination.
И это оценка снизу, так как вряд ли они отследили все источники загрязнения.