For many marine animals, tiny pieces of plastic are a big problem. But for one marine insect, they are a handy place to lay eggs.
Vast amounts of plastic have been dumped into the ocean over the last few decades. Bottles and bags are obvious, but the majority is made up of fragments less than 5 millimetres across. Much of this “microplastic” ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
To find out how the Garbage Patch affects local ecosystems, Miriam Goldstein and colleagues at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, monitored the Pacific pelagic water strider (Halobates sericeus). Between 1972 and 2010 the amount of microplastic in the Garbage Patch increased by two orders of magnitude. Over the same period, the water striders became significantly more abundant. They lay their eggs on hard surfaces, so the microplastics came in handy, says the team.
The plastic is effectively creating a new habitat, says Richard Thompson of Plymouth University, UK, and there will be knock-on effects.
Journal reference: Biology Letters, DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2012.0298
More on these topics: