Surprising Creatures Lurk in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – Scientific American
Scientists have long known that critters such as worms, crustaceans and mollusks could make their home on plastic debris. Animals have even crossed the Pacific Ocean on these makeshift rafts after a devastating tsunami struck Japan in 2011. But new research published on April 17 in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution adds two details that could be concerning for existing ecosystems. First, it finds that plastic is providing a home for coastal species to thrive in the open ocean thousands of miles from shore. Second, some of these species are reproducing despite the alien environment…
Regional Emmy® Award-Winning TRASH TALK – NOAA
Don’t you think it’s time we all have an honest trash talk? Ocean Today, in partnership with the NOAA Marine Debris Program, presents Regional Emmy® Award-winning TRASH TALK, a 15-minute special feature on marine debris for World Ocean Day. It is specially designed to be part of your World Ocean Day festivities and beyond…
Plastic Pollution
The world population is living, working, vacationing, increasingly conglomerating along the coasts, and standing on the front row of the greatest, most unprecedented, plastic waste tide ever faced. Washed out on our coasts in obvious and clearly visible form, the plastic pollution spectacle blatantly unveiling on our beaches is only the prelude of the greater story that unfolded further away in the world’s oceans, yet mostly originating from where we stand: the land.