, Columnist
The Pacific Garbage Patch Is Now Hosting a New Threat
It’s bad news that this Texas-sized glob of refuse is teeming with marine life.
An ocean plastic sampler.
Photographer: Agung Parameswara/Getty Images AsiaPacThis article is for subscribers only.
The infamous Pacific garbage patch is changing the balance of life in the seas. At least 37 species of coastal creatures — worms, crabs, shellfish and the like — have colonized the Texas-sized plastic tangle, turning it into an unnatural floating habitat.
The findings, reported last week in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, show life’s tenacity, with a variety of castaway creatures treating our trash as their own Noah’s Ark. But it’s not something to celebrate. It should be a wake-up call to create stronger, more binding prohibitions against using the oceans as a place to dump plastic.