A dynamic group of organisms is thriving within the biggest cluster of floating marine debris in the world
During the garbage patch swim, the crew aboard Lecomte's 67-foot support vessel, the sailboat, collected samples of floating life and trash daily, photographing 22 neuston samples. Helm and her colleagues used computer simulations of ocean surface currents to plan the expedition's route and guide it to regions predicted to possess high levels of floating debris.
Most other garbage patches"likely display similar patterns of neuston abundance, if the driving forces behind the creation of the patches are similar," says, a marine biologist at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville, South Africa, who did not participate in this work. In addition, neuston are fragile organisms, limiting what the nets could successfully catch and the researchers could analyze, Gibbons says. And most neuston are effectively transparent, making them difficult to see and capture, swaying the study toward the more conspicuous blue animals.
Future expeditions may help fill in the picture, studying how the life responds to changing seasons, for example."Getting to the center of gyres is expensive science, but it is important science," Gibbons says."Perhaps we should be putting appropriately equipped buoys out there and monitoring continuously."
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