What happens to the sunglasses that get lost in the ocean? Are there areas where things like that accumulate due to the currents? Underwater sunglasses graveyards?
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Recently, I watched a National Geographic special on the RMS Titanic. The wreck is 2 1/2 miles down on the Atlantic ocean floor. The debris field is only 2 square miles! If you think about it, the ship and everything that could not float is still on the bottom. Except human remains… Corpses were eaten by sea creatures, but clothing, hats, boots and shoes are in the same spot people came to rest (minus flesh, bones and teeth). You can see pairs of boots next to each other where there used to be a body. So, to answer the question a lot of stuff just stays where it fell on the bottom of the ocean, unless we remove it. I would assume some stuff moves if the current is strong enough. Where it goes, no one is 100% sure, but computer models can predict where the current is most likely to take things. Unless you are a corpse, then you are devoured by vicious and unforgiving sea life.
In short, it depends on where they enter the ocean and how buoyant/resilient the material is.
If the sunglasses are buoyant (i.e. they stay at the sea-surface) and avoid being smashed up by waves or degraded by sunlight, then where they end up with largely depend on large-scale ocean currents. This is a very complicated subject but there are certain current systems in the ocean called [subtropical gyres](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_gyre#Subtropical_gyres) that tend to accumulate things floating at the surface. You may have heard of the [Great Pacific Garbage Patch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch) and this is exactly what has led to the accumulation of trash in this region, but similar things exist in the other ocean basins. There is absolutely no guarantee that buoyant trash in the ocean will end up trapped in one of these gyres (how likely depends on where it entered the ocean) but they are zones of accumulation. Even if sunglasses enter one of these systems, waves and sunlight will eventually cause them to break down into smaller fragments (possibly microplastics eventually) and ultimately sink to the ocean floor.
On the other hand, if the sunglasses are not buoyant then they will make their way to the sea floor before they enter one of these large current systems. If they never make it far out to sea then they will rapidly get fragmented by waves near the shore. If they do make it some distance out to sea before reaching the sea floor then they may reach the calmer sea floor intact.
Once the sunglasses are at the sea floor, they’re probably not going to move around much, particularly if they’ve managed to avoid being smashed up. Currents at the sea floor are generally much, much weaker than currents at the surface, although [recently some research](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6495/1140) has suggested that deep ocean currents could be important for redistributing microplastics.
I’m a diver. Once you pass a point the current drops off massively and an ocean that’s very rough above you becomes rather calm. I’ve been to the very bottom floor of the ocean many times and there are small man made things sitting down there relatively undisturbed a very long time.
To answer your question, once the glasses sink past the current they will fall straight down to the bottom and sit there for likely all of eternity.
They are usually dense enough that they sink more or less straight down and stay where they land. I’ve seen many pairs of barnacle-encrusted sunglasses when snorkeling around beaches, docks and anchorages.
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