Gyres of ocean plastic accumulate when surface currents drive floating plastic pollution from coasts towards regions of the ocean, rotate and trap the floating objects. There are at least five plastic-infested gyres, the largest of which is the 79,000-tonne North Pacific Subtropical Gyre between California and Hawai’i, commonly known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This contains microplastics and floating debris such as nets, bottles, and buoys – and now coastal species.
“The issues of plastic go beyond just ingestion and entanglement,” said Dr Linsey Haram, lead author of the Nature Communications study on the adaptive coastal species. “It’s creating opportunities for coastal species’ biogeography to greatly expand beyond what we previously thought was possible.”
Haram and her colleagues call these communities “neopelagic”, referring to new communities in the open ocean. Scientists first suspected that coastal species may use plastic to survive...