Every year, over 283,000 pounds of plastic are dumped into the ocean from the Delaware river. This puts it among the top contributors of plastic pollution in the entire United States. The scale of plastic pollution isn’t unreasonable, as the amount of pollution scales directly with the population in the area. This has taught researchers to focus on large population centers when it comes to isolating big factors associated with pollution. The Delaware river basin contains 15% of the country’s landfills, but illegal dumping, litter, wind and rain cause trash to move out of dump sites or never enter them to begin with. It is estimated that 60% of all plastic ever made has been dumped into landfill or into the environment. Studying rivers is the smart way of handling this pollution problem, as most of the plastic pollution being created flows into the ocean through river mouths. This kind of pollution research is still a relatively new field and more research needs to be done to pinpoint specific sources of pollution, but headway is being made. ROV’s allow these researchers to study river pollution from a new angle. This allows more in depth research when it comes to pinpointing the source of pollution.