Great Pacific Garbage Patch now home to thriving ecosystem, scientists say
Source: https://globalnews.ca/news/9632233/great-pacific-garbage-patch-thriving-ecosystems-life-migration/
Author: Sarah Do Couto
A study published in the Nature Ecology & Evolution journal on April 17, 2023 outlined the thriving ecosystems discovered on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Among barnacles, mollusks and sea anemones, researchers identified 484 marine invebrates from 46 different species thriving amid the soupy garbage.
Between November 2018 and January 2019, the team of researchers — alongside Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit environmental engineering organization — collected 105 pieces of floating debris, including buoys, nets, jugs and toothbrushes from the Patch. The various items were photographed and then frozen to be transpod for study at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. There, researchers identified the plentiful signs of life.
Most of the species would usually reside in coastal habitats but have migrated to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for unknown reasons. Some may have arrived at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch as a result of the Great East Japan Tsunami of March 2011, which, by 2015, had carried at least 100,000 pieces of tsunami debris to North America.
The majority of the plastic found in the Patch comes from fishing industries, though between 10 and 20 per cent of the debris can be traced back to the 2011 Japan tsunami.