Great Pacific Garbage Patch Becomes an Ocean Habitat for Coastal Species

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the name given to the floating waste, mostly comprising plastic, in the open ocean between California and Hawaii. Spread across 1.6 million sq km, the patch is estimated to contain 79,000 tonnes of plastic waste! It is the largest of the world’s five trash-filled gyres, which form when plastic and other forms of waste are taken out to sea by surface currents and are then trapped and gathered together into great masses by rotating currents.

Bad? Indeed! But what’s worse is that a host of coastal organisms have hitch-hiked on the drifting garbage all the way to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and have made a comfortable home there. They are not only sustaining themselves in the open ocean, but are also thriving. Scientists have known that coastal species could catch rides out to sea on logs and seaweed in the past. But they haven’t formed a community of their own because most times these logs and other natural carriers disintegrate along with their riders. But plastic waste is creating opportunities for coastal species to greatly expand beyond what was previously thought possible. Thus, the impact of plastic waste on marine organisms is not just ingestion and entanglement.

New concern

The arrival of these new coastal organisms (which can be invasive) has the potential to deeply affect an ecosystem that is already delicate and lacking in resources, warn scientists.

Scientists have documented more than 40 coastal species clinging to plastic trash, in a study published in the journal Nature Communications. These include mussels, barnacles and shrimp-like amphipods. The scientists found that a mix of coastal and open ocean species have joined together on the plastic-creating something entirely new. They call these new communities neopelagic ‘neo’ meaning new and pelagic referring to the open ocean.

The team is still unsure as to how the neopelagic colonies are finding food – it is possible the plastic itself is acting as a reef and attracting food sources to it. Nor are they sure whether such colonies exist in other trash-filled gyres. However, as the production of global plastic waste continues to increase, scientists think such colonies of coastal organisms in the open ocean will continue to grow.

Picture Credit : Google

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