It was thought of as one of the last remaining pristine ecosystems on the planet, but European researchers have found a disturbing amount of plastics pollution in the Antarctic.

They say the level of plastic pollution is so high that toxins are being absorbed by fish and making their way into the human food chain.

For two years the French scientific vessel, Tara, sailed the globe using specialised nets to trawl for tiny pieces of plastic.

The expedition was to "take the pulse" of the ocean at the start of the 21st century and the scientists on board are horrified by what they found.

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Dr Chris Bowler is the scientific coordinator of Tara Oceans.

"We didn't expect to find such high amounts of plastic in the Antarctic because we consider this sort of area to be a pretty pristine environment far away from the dirty reach of our hands," said Dr Chris Bowler, the scientific coordinator of Tara Oceans.

Dr Bowler says the levels of plastics pollution in the Antarctic were similar to the average levels in oceans around the world.

He has told the BBC the scientists found up to 40,000 fragments of plastic waste in every square kilometre of sea.

While it is difficult to say where exactly that plastic is coming from, Dr Bowler says it is countries in the southern hemisphere which are most likely to blame.

"We would imagine that its coming from the southern hemisphere because knowing how the circulation of the currents move in the oceans, it's probably fair to believe that it is coming from these southern countries."

'Poisoning ourselves'

Dr Bowler also believes that toxins from these pieces of plastic will end up being consumed by humans.

"By reacting slowly with the ultraviolet light of the sun and the salt in the sea water, chemicals are released which are toxic; phallates, phenol molecules and so on, which get taken up by the plankton because plankton is the base of the food chain," he said.

"These will get up into the fish and then ultimately end up on our tables again. So we are sort of poisoning ourselves, sadly."

American oceanographer Charles Moore has labelled plastic pollution as a bigger problem than climate change, and one that must be fixed.

"It's murderous to marine ecosystems. It is acting as both predator and prey. As predator it is tangling things up and killing them," he said.

"We estimate just in the North Pacific alone 100,000 marine mammals are dying every year tangled up in this stuff."

The remains of a sea bird showing plastic debris it had eaten. ( AAP )

Captain Moore is the founder of California's Algalita Marine Research Institute.

In 1997 he was sailing between Hawaii and the Californian coast, when he came across what is now known as The Pacific Garbage Patch.

It is an enormous whirlpool of plastic marine debris, which is shifted and accumulated by currents in the Pacific Ocean.

Captain Moore is now in Australia to start what he calls The Plastic Conversation.

"It's a question I get wherever I go on this tour. Are we a little better or a little worse than our neighbour up the road or down the road?

"Frankly I can find you absolutely horrible examples in Australia of plastic waste clogging your waterways."

He says it is not just marine creatures that are hurt by plastic in water.

"The mutton bird, the shearwaters here in Australia used to five years ago have 70 per cent with phosphate in them.

"Now it is 100 per cent of all birds and these are the most common seabirds in the world, the shearwaters, 100 per cent of them have eaten plastic."

Captain Moore estimates up to 100 million tonnes of plastic washed into the world's oceans in the five decades between 1950, and 2000.

He says that figure is likely to have more than doubled since then and the time to act is now.

"Do we have to wait for a population as numerous as the millions and millions of mutton birds to crash before we do something about this problem?"