That's an excellent question. Obviously, these containers are packed with marketable goods. Most of them are petroleum-based products. When these containers fall off the ship and sink to the ocean floor, it doesn't take long before the tidal action or the wave action of the ocean bangs these containers around. Corrosion occurs. Damage occurs to the container doors. They begin to break open, releasing the contents of these containers. Because they're petroleum-based, most of them do float, and due to our geographical location here along the west coast of Vancouver Island, they wind up along our shores.
Anybody who's been to Tofino or Long Beach, where Terry is calling in from today, can attest to the power of the waves that affect and impact the near-shore habitat. When you have these plastic products that then get carried in by the ocean currents and the weather systems and reach the shorelines, those waves and logs and rocks and everything that interacts in those near-shore habitats begin to break down these products into microplastics.
In their larger form, they're entanglement risks. They're risks to vessel strikes or wildlife entanglement, especially whales and other cetaceans or pinnipeds. When they start to break down in the near-shore environment into the microplastic level, they are then ingested by a multitude of species.