Due to its geographic position, Henderson Island is home to the world's most plastic-polluted beach. The South Pacific Gyre washes ocean plastic onto the island's shores, and no one is around to pick it up.
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The ChallengeDue to its geographic position, Henderson Island is home to the world's most plastic-polluted beach. The South Pacific Gyre washes ocean plastic onto the island's shores, and no one is around to pick it up.
(By comparison, Manhattan is 22 square miles in size.) Henderson island sits in the path of the South Pacific Gyre, a major oceanic current. Such currents are known to accumulate plastic, reaching densities 2.3 million pieces per square mile.
Henderson was colonised by Polynesians between the 12th and 15th centuries, but since then the island has remained uninhabited. The inhospitable nature of the island, together with its remoteness and inaccessibility, has so far effectively ensured its conservation.
South Pacific currents dump as many as 40 million items of plastic and rubbish on the shores of Henderson Island each year, earning it the name of the most polluted island in the world.
Due to its geographic position, Henderson Island is home to the world's most plastic-polluted beach. The South Pacific Gyre washes ocean plastic onto the island's shores, and no one is around to pick it up.
Henderson Island, which lies in the eastern South Pacific, is one of the few atolls in the world whose ecology has been practically untouched by a human presence. Its isolated location provides the ideal context for studying the dynamics of insular evolution and natural selection.
A study of Henderson Island in the South Pacific and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, a remote territory of Australia in the Indian Ocean, found that plastic pollution acts as an insulator, increasing the temperature of the underlying sand.
It is the largest of the four islands of the Pitcairn Island group of which only Pitcairn, lying 200 km to its southwest, is inhabited. Covering some 3,700 ha but unsuitable for agriculture and with little fresh water, the island has no major land mass within a 5,000 km radius.
Henderson Island has a unique assemblage of plant and animal species. It supports 73 plant species, of which 9 are found no-where else in the world. Its four land birds are unique to Henderson: a fruit pigeon, a small parrot, a warbler, and a flightless rail. The island is also a vital haven for nesting seabirds.
The team estimates 37.7 million pieces of plastic debris litter Henderson Island, exposing the extent to which the Earth's nooks and crannies have become sinks for the 311 million tons of plastic waste created annually by humans.