{"id":45895,"date":"2023-07-19T08:07:07","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T22:07:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=45895"},"modified":"2023-07-19T08:07:07","modified_gmt":"2023-07-18T22:07:07","slug":"unexpected-species-are-colonizing-rafts-of-plastic-debris-in-the-high-seas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=45895","title":{"rendered":"Unexpected species are colonizing rafts of plastic debris in the high seas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone  wp-image-45896\" src=\"http:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Barnacles_on_Plastic-300x225.png\" alt=\"Barnacles on Plastic\" width=\"633\" height=\"475\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Barnacles_on_Plastic-300x225.png 300w, https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Barnacles_on_Plastic.png 700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 633px) 100vw, 633px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Coastal hydroid and gooseneck barnacles living on floating plastic collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Plastic pollution is creating mobile habitats for species once confined to the coasts.<\/p>\n<p>It used to be that coastal species lived in coastal\u00a0habitats. This makes sense. But now, a new study describes a surprising number of coastal marine invertebrate species thriving in floating communities in deep ocean waters. What&#8217;s their secret? They are colonizing ever-expanding rafts of plastic debris.<\/p>\n<p>The study was led by researchers from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the University of Hawai\u2018i (UH) at M\u0101noa.\u00a0They found a diverse range of taxonomic groups of coastal species in the eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre on over 70 percent of the plastic debris they examined. Not only that, but the debris carried more coastal species than open ocean species.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nexusnewsfeed.com\/article\/climate-ecology\/unexpected-species-are-colonizing-rafts-of-plastic-debris-in-the-high-seas\/\">https:\/\/nexusnewsfeed.com\/article\/climate-ecology\/unexpected-species-are-colonizing-rafts-of-plastic-debris-in-the-high-seas\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coastal hydroid and gooseneck barnacles living on floating plastic collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Plastic pollution is creating mobile habitats for species once confined to the coasts. It used to be that coastal species lived in coastal\u00a0habitats. This makes sense. But now, a new study describes a surprising number of coastal marine invertebrate &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/?p=45895\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Unexpected species are colonizing rafts of plastic debris in the high seas&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45897,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45895\/revisions\/45897"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}