The high seas have been colonized by a surprising number of coastal marine invertebrate species, which can now survive and reproduce in the open ocean, contributing strongly to the floating community composition.
The high seas have been colonized by a surprising number of coastal marine invertebrate species, which can now survive and reproduce in the open ocean, contributing strongly to the floating community composition. This finding was published today in Nature Ecology and Evolution by a team of researchers led by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa.
The researchers found coastal species, representing diverse taxonomic groups and life history traits, in the eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre on over 70 percent of the plastic debris they examined. Further, the debris carried more coastal species than open ocean species.
“This discovery suggests that past biogeographical boundaries among marine ecosystems — established for millions of years — are rapidly changing due to floating plastic pollution accumulating in the subtropical gyres,” said lead author Linsey Haram, research associate at SERC.
Read more at: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Examples of floating plastics collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre during The Ocean Cleanup’s 2018 expedition. (Photo Credit: The Ocean Cleanup)
