This image of the Mediterranean Sea taken by satellites has shocked experts: what you see is truly scary

The images of the Mediterranean Sea taken by satellites signal a worrying picture for experts. All the information you need to know.

We all know how much our seas are suffering due to climate change and general pollution. The dizzying and unstoppable increase in sea water temperatures, which contributes to the formation of extreme meteorological phenomena, to which are added the spills of polluting substances they are all phenomena that threaten the ecosystem of our seas.

Experts continually raise alarms about dangerous future scenarios for our very survival, between rising sea water levels, with all that this entails, and the loss of marine biodiversity. Phenomena that are harmful not only for the environment itself but also for the economy and ultimately for our very presence on this Planet, which we should take care of more carefully.

The experts’ latest alarm comes from situation of the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The satellite images collected and processed over the years provide a rather worrying picture. Here are the new discoveries.

Mediterranean Sea, satellite images worry experts

That the waters of the Mediterranean Sea were polluted by plastic, along with other substances, is nothing new. Several countries with high population density overlook the Mediterranean, some with various polluting industries, high traffic of merchant ships and all affected by mass tourism. Conditions which unfortunately cause high pollution of marine waters, often accompanied by insufficient purification of sewerage and also by poor waste management. A problem that we are reminded of every year by the monitoring of our seas by research bodies and environmental associations.

Among the most serious problems is thepollution due to plastic. Both macro plastics and invisible micro plastics have already seriously contaminated our seas. The situation of the Mediterranean Sea is no less serious than that of the Oceans, where there are gigantic islands of plastic. A more precise and worrying picture now comes from satellite images.

Long strings of plastic waste floating on the surface of the Mediterranean Sea have been photographed by satellites. These are worrying images because the satellites that detected plastic in the Mediterranean are not designed for waste detection, they have sensors with a reduced capacity in this sense. Yet they managed to identify areas polluted by plastic and how they have changed over time.

The images of plastic waste in the Mediterranean Sea come from Sentinel-2 satellites of the Copernicus program of the European Union and were collected, analyzed and processed by an international research in which theInstitute of Marine Sciences of the National Research Council of Lerici (Cnr-Ismar), as part of a consortium made up of multinational space companies and research institutes from six countries. The project was funded by Discovery Element of the European Space Agency (ESA).

International research has selected and studied 300,000 satellite images taken every three days for six years, with a spatial resolution of 10 meters. The images have located on the surface of the Mediterranean Sea thousands of strips of wastemostly made of plastic, some more than a kilometer long, others up to twenty kilometers long.

Thanks to these images it was possible to create a complete map of floating marine waste pollution in the Mediterranean. Some images can be seen on the CNR website.