Great Pacific Garbage Patch Hosts Neopelagic Communities, Potential Invasive Species

Strange neopelagic communities, a combination of coastal and marine animals, live among floating plastics in a vast "garbage patch" in the Pacific Ocean. These communities may enhance the likelihood that they will become invasive species and wreak havoc on adjacent ecosystems.

Neopelagic Communities

The possibility that animals like worms, crustaceans, and mollusks may live on plastic waste has long been recognized by scientists. Following the horrific tsunami that rocked Japan in 2011, animals have even traveled across the Pacific Ocean on these improvised rafts. However, a recent study has added two features that could be problematic for current ecosystems.

First, it discovers that coastal animals can flourish in the open ocean hundreds of kilometers from shore thanks to plastic. Second, despite their foreign surroundings, some of these creatures are capable of reproduction.

One of the least-known ecosystems is likely the sea surface, according to Martin Thiel, a marine scientist from Chile's Catholic University of the North who was not involved in the current study. A very specific community is currently experiencing widespread disruption.

100 Pieces of Plastic from the Garbage Patch

Just over 100 pieces of plastic that were retrieved out of the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the northern Pacific Ocean where currents congregate to deposit roughly 79,000 metric tons of plastic trash, were found to be home to species for the new study. On the plastic, the researchers found 484 invertebrates from a startling variety of species.

Many of these creatures belonged to species that are more frequently found on the western Pacific coast. These coastal species included jellyfish, sponges, worms, "moss animals" or bryozoans, and other creatures.

When Linsey Haram, the study's principal author, and Jim Carlton, a co-author from Williams College and the Mystic Seaport Museum, took out a piece of plastic and observed the number of coastal species located there, they were simply astounded. Marine ecology is Haram's area of expertise.

Coastal Species

Pelagic, or open-ocean, species were present in almost all of the debris, which makes sense given that much of the plastic's deterioration showed it had been at sea for a long time. But overall, the researchers discovered that at least one species typically found in coastal waters was present in roughly 70% of the debris they examined. This is far greater than what Haram and her coworkers anticipated before the study, according to Haram.

Additionally, upon closer inspection, the scientists discovered that coastal and open-ocean species coexisted in around two-thirds of the debris pieces. In addition to displacing coastal animals, plastic also builds what experts refer to as "neopelagic communities," which are artificial settlements, CNN reports.

She continues that conventional open-ocean dwellers that are accustomed to surviving on natural debris may pay a price for these unnatural communities since coastal species may be vying with one another for food and space, or they may even be devouring their neighbors.

Thriving, Reproducing... Invading?

Haram and her coworkers discovered evidence of these coastal species' reproductive activity. They discovered, for example, insect-like arthropods caring to egg clutches and anemones producing tiny clones of themselves-signs that imply the relocations made possible by plastic aren't always transient. Additionally, the plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may wash up on distant shores, where transplanted animals may establish themselves.

The species may colonize the new places they reach, according to Linda Amaral-Zettler, a marine microbiologist from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research who was not involved in the current study. She thinks that the study would serve as a warning that plastic may be aiding species invasions, especially between widely distributed coastal habitats, Scientific American reports.

The study by Carlton, Haram, and a few of their colleagues was published in April of this year in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.