Modern-day plastic bottles, alongside Heineken beer and 7-Up drinks cans have been found on a 1758 shipwreck in Portsmouth Harbour.
The rubbish has settled on the ship, called HMS Invincible, because wrecks act like “accumulation points” for waste, Kevin Stratford from the Marine Archaeology Sea Trust told the BBC.
The Trust said divers had found a “surprisingly large quantity” of the stuff, which could potentially impact marine life, it said. Some of it was decades old.
The ship capsized between Langstone Harbour and the Isle of Wight after its rudder jammed.
Stratford told the BBC of the waste : “It gets in the way of the archaeology but is also highlighting the potential for this and other shipwrecks to act as collection points for rubbish.
“The material slowly breaks down in the wrecks and likely pollutes much of the marine life inhabiting them. The diving community has long been involved in cleaning up our oceans as we are the people who get to see the high level of pollutants first hand.”
Earlier this month, a team of coastguards on Brean Beach in Burnham, Somerset found an almost pristine 47-year-old Fairy Liquid bottle that had been washed onto the beach during a storm, highlighting just how long our plastic waste sticks around in the oceans.