Coastal sea creatures are finding their way out to the open ocean, thanks to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, according to a new study.
Researchers at the University of Hawaii, Manoa, said they found 484 marine organisms attached to plastic floating in the ocean. The organisms include anemones and pelagic gooseneck barnacles.
“Our results suggest coastal organisms now are able to reproduce, grow and persist in the open ocean — creating a novel community that did not previously exist, being sustained by the vast and expanding sea of plastic debris,” co-author Gregory Ruiz, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, said in a press release. “This is a paradigm shift in what we consider to be barriers to the distribution and dispersal of coastal invertebrates.
The garbage patch — an archipelago of debris twice the size of Texas — is located northeast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The oceanic wasteland is shaped by a circular current, or gyre, that keeps the trash contained within 620,000 square miles. Most of the plastic in the garbage patch — roughly 75% — comes from the fishing industry, according to nonprofit Ocean Cleanup. About 10%-20% of the total volume comes from the 2011 Japanese tsunami.
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