Golf balls found at the bottom of Loch Ness

A group of scientists conducting research in Loch Ness have found thousands of golf balls at the bottom of the loch with an underwater robot.

Teams of researchers from the Danish Golf Union have discovered that it takes between 100 and 1,000 years for a golf ball to decompose naturally. This is an alarming fact as it is estimated that in the USA alone, more than 300 million golf balls are lost each year. It seems that the amount of waste generated by plastic golf balls is becoming a serious problem.

This fact is evidenced by the recent discovery, by a group of scientists searching for the Loch Ness Monster in Scotland, of hundreds of thousands of golf bags at the bottom of the loch.

Tourists and locals are believed to have used the lake for years as an alternative “driving range”. The seabed littered with golf balls was viewed by the SeaTrepid underwater robot camera.

With the number of gold balls discarded each year, the Danish Golf Association conducted a series of tests to determine the impact of golf balls on the environment.

From the moon to the bottom of Loch Ness, golf balls are mankind’s legacy in the form of garbage.

British legislator Patrick Harvie says it was determined that during their slow decomposition, golf balls release large amounts of heavy metals. Dangerous levels of zinc were found in the synthetic rubber that covers the core of golf balls. When immersed in water, the zinc itself attacks the sediment on the sea floor and poisons the surrounding flora and fauna.

Danish Golf Union manager Torben Kastrup Petersen said the scale of the problem is unknown. “There has been very little research on the environmental impact of golf balls, but it is safe to say that the indicators are not good. We are planning to collaborate with American environmental researchers to conduct further tests to explore more intensively the extent of the problem.”