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Scientists find coastal species living among ocean trash

Marine creatures and plants commonly found in coastal regions have found new ways to survive in the oceans by colonizing plastic pollution, scientists say.

A new study, published Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, has discovered species of coastal marine life in floating trash bins after sailing to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, also known as the Subtropical Gyre. is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” hundreds of miles from the sea.

“Plastic problems are not just about ingestion and entanglement,” said Linsey Haram, lead author of the paper and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “It creates the opportunity for the biogeography of coastal species to expand far more than we previously thought possible.”

Plastic clumps form when flows bring plastic pollution from shorelines into areas where the whirling currents trap floating objects in place, which can accumulate over time. There are at least five plastic-contaminated gyms globally. The North Pacific subtropical gyre, located between California and Hawaii, has the most floating plastic with an estimated 79 million kilograms floating in an area of ​​more than 1.5 million square kilometers.

So far, sightings of coastal species on plastic in the ocean have been confirmed to be rare. Scientists began to suspect these species could use plastic to survive in the oceans for long periods of time after the 2011 tsunami in Japan when they discovered that nearly 300 species had drifted across the Pacific Ocean. Ocean on the debris for several years.

“The open ocean has so far been uninhabitable for coastal organisms,” said Greg Ruiz, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Center for Environmental Research and a co-author of the study. “Partly because of habitat limitations — there was no plastic before — and partly, we think, because this is a food desert.”

Plastic is providing habitat, but Ruiz said scientists are still trying to figure out which species are foraging, such as whether they drift into hotspots or if plastic behaves like a reef. corals and attract nutrients or not.

Now that they know coastal species can survive deep in the ocean, scientists are wondering how their presence might impact the environment already inhabited by sea creatures. sea ​​creatures, who also use plastic as a habitat.

“Coastal species are in direct competition with these rafts on the ocean floor,” says Haram. “They’re competing for space. They’re competing for resources. Those interactions are very poorly understood.”

The discovery also raises questions about the ability of coastal species to enter areas where they are alien. This was seen with debris from the 2011 tsunami that brought creatures from Japan to North America.

“Those other coastlines are not just urban centers,” says Ruiz.

The study authors say they still don’t know how common these coastal biomes are, whether they can continue to be self-sustaining or if they exist outside of the subtropical North Pacific Gyre. But with the world’s growing reliance on plastic and more frequent storms caused by climate change, they argue, more plastic will be pushed into the ocean and to coastal populations in the ocean. develop.

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