Scientists find coastal marine species living among trash in open ocean

Marine creatures and plants typically found in coastal regions have found new ways to survive in the open ocean by colonizing plastic pollution, scientists say.

A new study, published on Thursday in the journal Nature Communications, has found coastal marine species inhabiting floating trash after catching a ride to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, also known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” hundreds of miles out to sea.

"The issues of plastic go beyond just ingestion and entanglement," Linsey Haram, lead author of the article and fellow at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said in a news release. "It’s creating opportunities for coastal species’ biogeography to greatly expand beyond what we previously thought was possible."

Gyres of plastic form when currents deliver plastic pollution from the coasts into regions where rotating currents trap the floating objects in place and they can accumulate over time. There are at least five plastic-infested gyres around the globe. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, located between California and Hawaii, has the most floating plastic with an estimated 79 million kilograms floating in a region over 1.5 million square kilometres.

Until now, confirmed sightings of coastal species on plastic in the open ocean were rare. Scientists first began suspecting these species could use plastic to survive out in the ocean for long periods of time after the 2011 tsunami in Japan when they discovered that nearly 300 species had rafted all the way across the Pacific on debris over the course of several years.