As a researcher with the Department of Fisheries Malaysia studying marine plastic pollution, I spend my days documenting a crisis that most people never see. Research on Malaysian beaches reveals between 64 to 1,930 pieces of plastic debris per square metre. Bottles, bags, food containers and abandoned fishing gear that tell the story of our plastic-dependent lifestyle. But this visible pollution represents only the surface of what our research team discovers when we dive deeper into our marine ecosystem.
The scale of Malaysia’s plastic challenge through a researcher’s eyes
