Coral reefs in peril: Research reveals fishing gear plastics inflict severe damage to underwater ecosystem
Fishing gear plastic formed nearly three-quarters of the plastic debris documented through underwater visual surveys of coral reefs across the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans, new research published in the journal Nature said. Revealing the extent of plastic pollution on coral reefs, an international team of researchers from the California Academy of Sciences (US), University of Sao Paulo (Brazil), University of Oxford (UK), and other collaborators found that debris increased with depth and is correlated with proximity to marine protected areas. The team conducted more than 1,200 visual surveys across 84 shallow and mesophotic reef ecosystems located in 14 countries. Mesophotic, or 'twilight zone', coral reefs exist between 30 and 150 metres deep. Of the total debris, 88 per cent was macroplastics larger than about five centimetres. Human-derived debris was found in nearly all locations studied, including some of the planet's most remote and pristine coral reefs, such as those adjacent to uninhabited islands in the central Pacific. The lowest density of plastic pollution was seen in the Marshall Islands, a coral island group in eastern Micronesia (Oceania), while the highest was recorded at Comoros, an island chain off the southeast coast of Africa, at nearly 84,500 items per square kilometre.
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The study found coral reefs to be more contaminated by plastics than other marine ecosystems that were evaluated, and that the contamination, increasing with depth, peaked in the mesophotic zone. «It was surprising to find that debris increased with depth since deeper reefs in general are farther from sources of plastic pollution,» said Luiz Rocha, Academy
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