Microbes crucial to reducing sea debris
Print Edition
MICROSCOPIC creatures could be helping reduce marine garbage on the ocean surface, not only by “eating” plastics but by causing tiny pieces to sink to the seafloor, Australian researchers have said.
The plastic-dwellers appear to be biodegrading the millions of tons of debris floating on waters worldwide, according to University of Western Australia oceanographers.
They analyzed more than 1,000 images of material drifting along Australia’s coast in a study published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
The study is the first to document the biological communities living on the tiny particles of debris known as microplastics, and bares many new types of microbe and invertebrate for the first time.
“Plastic biodegradation seems to happen at sea,” oceanographer Julia Reisser said. “I am excited about this because the ‘plastic-eating’ microbes could provide solutions for better waste disposal practices on land.”
Scientists have warned that microplastics — particles smaller than five millimeters — threaten to alter the open ocean’s natural environment.
The United Nations Environment Program said in 2012 that around 13,000 pieces of microplastic litter were found in every square kilometer of sea, with the North Pacific most badly affected.
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