The point at which the ocean surface meets open air is called a neustonic habitat. For millennia, the only things you would have found floating on it were natural objects, like wood, pumice and kelp. But today, this landscape is dramatically changing. Do you know what’s one of the fastest growing items in neustonic habitats? Man-made plastics.
Click start to play today’s Spell It, where we wonder what’s ‘next’ for the world’s oceans.
Just consider the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Although it conjures an image of an island of trash, in reality, most of the garbage is tiny, comprising microplastics that cannot be seen with the naked eye. According to a report in National Geographic, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch’s microplastics make the water look like cloudy soup, and are usually intermixed with larger objects, like fishing gear, shoes, and bigger plastic items that are breaking down every day into smaller and smaller pieces.
Even the seafloor beneath the patch of debris is likely to be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers recently discovered that about 70 per cent of marine debris sinks to the bottom of the ocean, according to the National Geographic report.
Now, scientists are finding something even more unusual.
Although the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is more than 1,600km away from land, it’s becoming a hub of life. According to an April 2023 study in the UK-based journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, the patch is now home to sea anemones in a range of sizes, lacelike bryozoa (aquatic invertebrates), shrimp-like amphipods, Japanese oysters, mussels and more. What’s strange is that these are all coastal creatures, yet they’ve adapted to survive in the open sea, by clinging to plastic.
Our debris, in short, is creating an entirely new habitat. Coastal organisms are now co-existing with open-sea ecosystems, and the giant island of plastic has become an active experiment site in biology.
For some creatures, the garbage patch is actually working in their favour. In a May 2012 study published by the UK-based Royal Society journal, scientists found that a marine insect called Halobates sericeus, which once had to lay its eggs on the rare floating feather or pumice stone in the ocean, now just uses the plastic wasteland.
For other marine animals, the effect of the Garbage Patch is less clear. Scientists have found waters around it teeming with life – from Portuguese man o’ wars to blue sea dragons. Just how the proliferation of plastic is affecting them remains to be seen. A majority of the debris includes harmful equipment from the fishing industry, like nets, crates, ropes, crates and buoys, and researchers have found them entangled with coastal animals, dragged out into the deep. This kind of equipment lasts for a long time – it’s engineered to do so – but it has become the major culprit in destroying and dislocating entire ecosystems of fish, shellfish and smaller marine creatures.
Now, the Garbage Patch is disrupting ocean life in ways we never intended and cannot yet foresee.
What do you think should be done? Play today’s Spell It and tell us at games@gulfnews.com.
