Floating garbage is now a problem in the Arctic Ocean as well.

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At a Glance

Arctic Ocean found to have billions of pieces of plastic floating in it.Plastic seems to have come from Europe and the East Coast of the U.S.

It's no secret that humanity's plastic .

Nowit appears the Arctic Ocean – contrary to its relatively unspoiled reputation –is no exception. A new analysis, , learned there are roughly 300 billion pieces of plastic floating in its waters.

This Arctic garbage patch is fairly small compared to the more famous ones in the Pacific Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea; it makes up , according to the International Business Times.

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Study author Andrés Cózar, from the University of Cadiz in Spain, .

“We did not expect to find high concentrations of plastic there, so far from the populated regions and the large sources of plastic pollution,” he told the Verge.

While more than a third of the 42 sites the team examined didn’t have any plastic, clustered in the Greenland and Barents seas, the Verge also reported. Research suggested the plastic found near Norway probably came from North America's East Coast and Europe.

Thermohaline circulation, which usually delivers warm water to the Arctic from the North Atlantic, is now apparently carrying the majority of plastic, the study also said. A decrease in the amount of sea ice cover due to climate change and increased shipping in the area may have also contributed.

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“The growing level of human activity in an increasingly warm and ice-free Arctic, with wider open areas available for the spread of microplastics, suggests that high loads of marine plastic pollution may become prevalent in the Arctic in the future,” said the study. “The uniqueness of the Arctic ecosystem makes the potential ecological implications of exposure to plastic debris of special concern.”

With plastic usually taking about 450 years to degrade, its subsequent consumption by fish and other wildlife means it is also becoming a bigger part of our diet.

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