Plastic Pollution

There are at least five hot spots of floating plastic in the global ocean. These are gyres where circulating currents trap debris. This one, the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is the largest, with almost 80,000 tons distributed over 600,000 square miles. The scientists teamed up with a charity that collects old fishing gear and other litter from the ocean, and gathered hundreds of plastic items to study in the lab. They found plants and animals including anemones, tiny marine bugs, mollusks and crabs on ninty percent of the debris they examined. As well as creating a semi-permanent floating habitat for coastal species in the open ocean, the researchers say all this plastic could be providing invasive species with rafts that allow them to cross the Pacific. This, they say, is yet another unintended consequence of plastic pollution for the ocean.