![\""Coastal\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/4\/2021\/12\/Colonized-Debris-1-19d97f7.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C465"\" "\\"\"Coastal\\"")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>Now, a study carried out by researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), the University of Hawai\u2019i and the Ocean Voyages Institute have found many coastal species \u2013 including anemones, hydroids and shrimp-like amphipods \u2013 making their homes on the mass of plastic waste<\/a>.<\/p>\n They dubbed these communities neopelagic, from \u201cNeo\u201d meaning new, and \u201cpelagic\u201d meaning open ocean.<\/p>\n \u201cThe open ocean has not been habitable for coastal organisms until now,\u201d said SERC senior scientist Greg Ruiz<\/a>, who heads the Marine Invasions Lab. \u201cPartly because of habitat limitation \u2013 there wasn\u2019t plastic there in the past \u2013 and partly, we thought, because it was a food desert.\u201d<\/p>\n Using current models created by researchers at the University of Hawai\u2019i to target the locations where plastic waste was most likely to pile up, the Ocean Voyages Institute team collected 103 tonnes of plastic and other waste from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. This material was then analysed by the team at SERC.<\/p>\n \u201cThe issues of plastic go beyond just ingestion and entanglement,\u201d said Linsey Haram<\/a>, lead author of the article and former postdoctoral fellow at SERC. \u201cIt\u2019s creating opportunities for coastal species\u2019 biogeography to greatly expand beyond what we previously thought was possible.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more about plastic pollution:<\/strong><\/p>\n The team are still unsure as to how the neopelagic colonies are finding food \u2013 it is possible they are drifting into existing food hotspots, or perhaps the plastic itself is acting as a reef and attracting food sources to it, they say.<\/p>\n Nor are they sure how common the colonies are, or if they even exist outside the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. However, as the production of global plastic waste continues to increase, the team think it seems likely that these colonies of coastal rafters will continue to grow.<\/p><\/body><\/html>\n By Jason Goodyer Published: Thursday, 02 December 2021 at 12:00 am The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, or as it is more commonly known, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a 79,000-tonnes mass of plastic waste floating in the open ocean between California and Hawai\u2019i that covers a region of 1.5 million square kilometres. It is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":400,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants.jpg",1200,897,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants-300x224.jpg",300,224,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants-768x574.jpg",768,574,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants-1024x765.jpg",800,598,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants.jpg",1200,897,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2021\/12\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-being-colonised-by-animals-and-plants.jpg",1200,897,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Jason Goodyer Published: Thursday, 02 December 2021 at 12:00 am The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, or as it is more commonly known, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a 79,000-tonnes mass of plastic waste floating in the open ocean between California and Hawai\u2019i that covers a region of 1.5 million square kilometres. It is…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/399"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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