Pollution of the Ocean by Plastic and Trash Garbage has been discarded into the oceans for as long

as humans have sailed the seven seas or lived on seashores or near waterways flowing into the sea. Since the 1940s, plastic use has increased dramatically, resulting in a huge quantity of nearly indestructible, lightweight material floating in the oceans and eventually deposited on beaches worldwide. As the graph shows, trash items encompass a variety of materials. Sources of marine debris include: Items that are brought to the beach and left there by beachgoers; Garbage deliberately or accidentally discarded by ships at sea or from offshore oil platforms; and Material carried to sea by rivers and estuaries , especially from large coastal cities. City storm sewers are a significant source of solid waste entering the sea from land sources. Effects on Wildlife Aside from its unsightly appearance and potential impact to human health, marine debris has harmful effects on wildlife. Fish, birds, marine mammals, reptiles, and other animals can become entangled in discarded or lost nets that continue to do what they were designed to docatch living animalsbut now they catch them indiscriminately, a process called "ghost fishing." Items unintended for fishing become traps. Woven plastic onion sacks floating in the sea have entrapped endangered hawksbill sea turtles. Plastic bags become invisible to birds diving for This graph shows the average number of trash items counted for several years along a popular 7-mile stretch of Mustang Island Gulf Beach, Texas. Beverage cans are single drink containers and include plastic bottles; chemical containers are 5-gallon pails and drums of chemicals; green bottles are bleach bottles from Mexico (common on Texas beaches); egg cartons and milk jugs are standard grocery items. Almost all the marine debris collected at the North Jetty of the Aransas Pass (San Jose Island) has come from offshore. Even this remote Texas barrier island does not escape the floating plastics, Styrofoam pieces, and other trash items. fish and are skewered by the birds' sharp bills, usually resulting in their death. Plastic is also mistaken for food and is eaten at sea by birds, turtles, and even whales. This can choke them, poison them, or simply make them think they are full when this "food" has no nutritional value. Many marine animals get entangled in fishing lines used by recreational anglers. Efforts to Reduce Debris Unsightly littered beaches gained public attention in the early 1980s and efforts were made to find out how much garbage there was, where it came from, and what its effect was on ocean wildlife. Medical waste and other floatable debris washing ashore at public beaches of the eastern United States, primarily in New York and New Jersey, was a particularly disturbing and highly publicized aspect of ocean pollution by municipal solid waste. The incidents in New York and New Jersey spurred the 1988 passage of the federal Medical Waste Tracking Act (which has since transferred to individual states) as well as subsequent federal and state laws designed to better regulate the handling, treatment, transportation, and disposal of medical waste. Since the early 1990s, medical waste in U.S. coastal waters has faded from public view, and is not considered a public or environmental health threat associated with ocean dumping, primarily because it comprises only a small percent of municipal solid waste items found in the ocean. However, Royal terns ( Sterna maxima ) are among several species of seabirds that dive from the air into the water to catch fish with their sharp beaks. A plastic bag floating at the surface would be invisible to the tern, and may even have attracted the fish in the first place. In this photograph, the tern's bill penetrated the plastic and left the bird wearing the bag around its neck like a shroud. The tern was treated at the University of Texas's Animal Rehabilitation Keep (ARK) and eventually was released back to the wild. plastic and trash remain major concerns due to their widespread presence. Scientists and environmental groups since the 1980s have more closely addressed the problem of marine debris and its effect on public health and wildlife. The general public has helped in organized beach cleanups using data sheets to record the types and numbers of items found. Cleanups were at first limited to beaches bordering the United States ocean coastlines, but soon international efforts were organized, and cleanups were also done along riverbanks, lakeshores, marinas , and even by divers to recover submerged items along jetties and fishing piers.

MARPOL. Due in part to the public attention paid to marine debris, an international agreement (MARPOL, or The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution by Garbage from Ships; Annex V) was reached by many of the world's governments to prohibit or limit the quantity of garbage that can be discharged at sea or in waterways that lead to the sea. (The United States ratified Annex V in 1987.) In some areas like the Gulf of Mexico, there is a total ban on discharging plastics into the sea. All vessels must carry signs informing crews of the laws and must provide containers for different types of materials that will be offloaded at the next port of call rather than dumped into the sea. Persistent Problem. After the United States ratified MARPOL Annex V in 1987, the quantity of marine debris decreased, but has increased again in recent years. Solutions include: Improving the general public's awareness, concern, and attitude towards littering; Reducing the use of plastic and other materials for disposable packaging; and Enforcing existing laws, especially at sea, to punish habitual litterers. As the twenty-first century opened, marine debris continued to wash ashore on beaches around the world, including the United States. There has been some reduction in the quantity of trash on America's ocean beaches, partly because of adherence to the law, partly because of self-imposed company rules, and partly owing to increased public awareness. Much of the credit for this must be given to the beach cleanups that have given the public a first-hand look at the problem. Even so, marine mammals, reptiles, birds, and other ocean life continue to sustain injuries from ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic debris and fishing gear. SEE ALSO B EACHES ; C OASTAL W ATERS M ANAGEMENT ; H UMAN H EALTH AND THE O CEAN ; O CEAN H EALTH , A SSESSING ; P OLLUTION OF S TREAMS BY G ARBAGE AND T RASH ; P OLLUTION OF THE O CEAN BY S EWAGE , N UTRIENTS , AND C HEMICALS ; W ASTEWATER T REATMENT AND MANAGEMENT . Anthony F. Amos Bibliography Amos, Anthony F. Solid Waste Pollution on Texas Beaches: A Post-MARPOL Annex V Study: OCS Study MMS 930013 New Orleans, LA: U.S. Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Gulf of Mexico OCS Region, vol. 1, 1993. Center for Marine Conservation. A Citizen's Guide to Plastics in the Ocean: More than a Litter Problem. Washington, D.C.: Center for Marine Conservation, 1994 Coe, James M., and Donald B. Rogers, eds. Marine Debris: Sources, Impacts, and Solutions. New York: SpringerVerlag, 1996. Committee on Shipborne Wastes, Marine Board Commission on Engineering and Technical Systems, National Research Council. Clean Ships, Clean Ports, Clean Oceans: Controlling Garbage and Plastic Wastes at Sea. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1995. Internet Resources Assessing and Monitoring Floatable Debris. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Oceans and Coastal Protection Division. <http://www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/debris/floatingdebris/toc.html& x003e; . Marine Debris. The Ocean Conservancy. <http://www.oceanconservancy.org/dynamic/issues/threats/debris/ ebris.htm> . Marine Debris Abatement: Trash in Our OceansYou Can Be Part of the Solution. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Ocean and Coastal Protection Division. <http://www.epa.gov/owow/oceans/debris/index.html> .

Read more: Pollution of the Ocean by Plastic and Trash - sea, oceans, effects, types, source, effect, marine, human http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Po-Re/Pollution-of-the-Ocean-by-Plastic-andTrash.html#ixzz1ay7u2wjM All photos (except where noted) courtesy of Paul Joyce, Sea Education Association Plastics in Our Oceans by Kimberly Amaral

Strolling through the average supermarket, shoppers find literally hundreds (if not thousands) of items to make their lives easier. Individually wrapped snack cakes, plastic baggies to store sandwiches for lunch, unbreakable soda bottles, and disposable razors, diapers, and shampoo bottles. Unless specifically requested, even the bags we use to carry home our goods are often plastic. To humans, these are items of comfort, if not necessity. But to marine animals, they can be a floating minefield. Photo by K. Amaral Plastic--whether it be for a container, a wrapper, or the product itself--has become an everyday part of our lives. This isn't necessarily a bad thing-plastic is also the material diabetics use for their disposable syringes; arthritic patients have for their replaced hips; and construction workers wear to protect their heads. But when plastic reaches our waters, whether it be plastic bags or drifting fish nets, it poses a threat to the animals that depend on the oceans for food. To a sea turtle, a floating plastic bag looks like a jellyfish. And plastic pellets--the small hard pieces of plastic from which plastic products are made--look like fish eggs to seabirds. Drifting nets entangle birds, fish and mammals, making it difficult, if not impossible to move or eat. As our consumption of plastic mounts, so too does the danger to marine life. Before the days of plastic, when fishermen dumped their trash overboard or lost a net, it consisted of natural materials--metal, cloth or paper that would either sink to the bottom or biodegrade quickly. But plastic remains floating on the surface, the same place where many genuine food sources lie--and can remain so for 400 years. Plastic is durable and strong--precisely the qualities that make it so dangerous if it reaches the ocean. It can get there from here But how would a syringe that a diabetic uses make it into the ocean? If plastic objects make it into the main sewer system (say, by being flushed down the toilet, or carried by the rain into a street drain), and the water treatment plants are overwhelmed by excessive rain, then those floating objects can float right out to sea. This is precisely what happened on the New York and New Jersey beaches in 1988, when medical waste was floating up onshore. After an unusually dry spring, litter began accumulating on the streets and in storm sewers. When heavy rains arrived in mid-summer, they swept the streets clean and overloaded combined sewers. After floating out to sea, the debris was blown back onto the shores. In a more direct route, boaters may dump their trash right into the sea. In the past, this has been the main cause of plastics in the ocean. In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences estimated that 14 billion pounds of garbage was being dumped into the ocean every year. That's more than 1.5 million pounds per hour. More than 85% of this trash was estimated to come from the world's merchant shipping fleet in the form of cargo-associated wastes. According to the Academy, the United States could be the source of approximately one third of this ocean pollution. Fortunately, since the last day of 1988, it has been illegal for ships to dump plastics into the ocean. But that law is difficult to enforce, and cannot account for the thousands of miles of driftnets and other gear set by fishermen, which can ensnare and kill birds diving for the fish below, or come loose, only to be discovered later by an unfortunate humpback whale. It's a great big world out there Anyone who's been on a boat far from the sight of land will tell you how enormous the ocean feels. Wouldn't this debris simply get dispersed, virtually eliminating the possibility of an encounter with a marine animal? The answer is no. While the ocean does disperse the trash, it also runs in currents, which can keep the floating trash traveling constantly in "gyres," concentrating it in areas where currents meet. The largest of these movements, is called the central gyre. It moves in a clockwise circular pattern, moving inside the Gulf Stream, and dominates the western North Atlantic. Studies begun in 1984 have tracked how these currents keep plastics migrating, with heavy concentrations in the northern Sargasso Sea (coincidentally, a favorite spawning place for fish). The Northeast United States, "upstream" of the central gyre, has currents that keep most of the locally generated marine debris

local. Usually the only ways to escape this constant circular pattern is if the plastic decays enough to sink, or lands onshore to be (hopefully) picked up by a passer-by. And apparently, the ocean isn't large enough to avoid marine life encounters with debris. Plastic's devastating effect on marine mammals was first observed in the late 1970s, when scientists from the National Marine Mammal Laboratory concluded that plastic entanglement was killing up to 40,000 seals a year. Annually, this amounted to a four to six percent drop in seal population beginning in 1976. In 30 years, a 50% decline in Northern Fur Seals has been reported. Elephant seal entangled in fishing line. Photo by John Domont. Courtesy of the Center for Marine Conservation. These curious, playful seals would often play with fragments of plastic netting or packing straps, catching their necks in the webbing. The plastic harness can constrict the seal's movements, killing the seal through starvation, exhaustion, or infection from deep wounds caused by the tightening material. While diving for food, both seals and whales can get caught in translucent nets and drown. In the fall of 1982, a humpback whale tangled in 50 to 100 feet of net washed up on a Cape Cod beach. It was starving and its ribs were showing. It died within a couple of hours. Along Florida's coasts, brown pelicans diving for fish sometimes dive for the bait on a fisherman's line. Cutting the bird loose only makes the problem worse, as the pelican gets its wings and feet tangled in the line, or gets snagged onto a tree. Plastic soda rings, "baggies," styrofoam particles and plastic pellets are often mistaken by sea turtles as authentic food. Clogging their intestines, and missing out on vital nutrients, the turtles starve to death. Seabirds undergo a similar ordeal, mistaking the pellets for fish eggs, small crab and other prey, sometimes even feeding the pellets to their young. Despite the fact that only 0.05% of plastic pieces from surface waters are pellets, they comprise about 70% of the plastic eaten by seabirds. These small plastic particles have been found in the stomachs of 63 of the world's approximately 250 species of seabirds. Wildlife is not the only area to suffer from the effects of marine debris. Plastic bags are the leading external cause of marine engine damage in Massachusetts. Other plastic items foul propellers and interfere with fishing tackle. What's being done about plastics In 1987, a law was finally passed restricting the dumping of plastics into the ocean. The Marine Plastic Pollution Research and Control Act (MARPOL) went into effect on December 31, 1988, making it illegal for any U.S. vessel or land-based operation to dispose of plastics at sea. It is part of an international treaty, where countries representing at least half of the shipping fleet tonnage in the world agreed to Annex V of the treaty, preventing "pollution by garbage from ships." It prohibits the dumping of plastics anywhere in the ocean, and the dumping of other materials, such as paper, glass, metal, and crockery, closer to shore. The plastics industry has also stepped in, taking measures to reclaim plastic resin pellets that often get lost during production or transport. The Society of the Plastic Industry has produced many public service ads for trade magazines, and was a strong supporter of MARPOL Annex V. Plastics manufacturers are also investigating ways to create "degradable" plastics. Although all materials eventually break down, a plastic soda ring can take up to 400 years to biodegrade. So researchers are working with two types of degradable plastics: photodegradable and biodegradable. Photodegradable plastics are made to become weak and brittle when exposed to sunlight for prolonged periods. At least 16 states--Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island included--have passed laws requiring six-pack holders be biodegradable (these are marked by a small diamond between the rings). Biodegradable plastics are made with cornstarch, so bacteria and other organisms eat away at the plastic, breaking it up into smaller pieces. Neither of these methods, however, solve the problem of plastic in the oceans, since they are only broken up into smaller pieces--creating an even more dangerous situation for animals that mistake smaller plastic pieces for food. Perhaps the most effective method right now for solving the persistent plastic problem is beach cleaning. Coastal cleanups gather volunteers to collect trash that has washed up on the beach--or has been left by beachgoers to be carried out by the surf--and removed it from the marine cycle. The Center for Marine Conservation has been coordinating coastal cleanups since 1986. (The first nationwide cleanup took place in 1988, just four months before the MARPOL treaty took effect. Canada and Mexico joined in on the act in 1989.) The CMC also keeps careful track of all the debris that is collected. Data cards list 85 debris

items in eight categories: plastic, styrofoam, glass, rubber, metal, paper, wood and cloth. During the 1993 coastal cleanup, over 3.1 million pounds of trash was collected--more than half of that was plastic. The CMC also divides their data into debris found, listing the "dirty dozen"--twelve items found most frequently: 1) cigarette butts 2) paper pieces 3) plastic pieces 4) styrofoam 5) glass pieces 6) plastic food bags 7) plastic caps and lids 8) metal beverage cans 9) plastic straws 10) glass beverage bottles 11) plastic beverage bottles 12) styrofoam cups Debris that can be traced to recreational fishing and boating, galley-type wastes, and cruise ship debris all declined in 1993--perhaps a glimmer of hope resulting from the MARPOL treaty. The laws, enforced by the Coast Guard in the United States, are difficult to monitor. Instead, they rely heavily on an educational campaign, bringing about "voluntary compliance through awareness." There is still much debris floating around our seas and endangering marine animals. But as more laws are passed, and as more people become involved in projects like beach clean-ups, perhaps the only plastic will be in our supermarkets. What you can do 1) Look for alternative materials or avoid excessive packaging when deciding on purchases. Use paper bags, milk and juice in cardboard, and cloth diapers. Insist on paper bags and glass bottles. 2) Recycle. Many communities currently offer pick-up recycling programs for #1 and #2 plastics. Other forms of plastic may be accepted by a local recycling business. If your community doesn't have a recycling program, contact your city or town hall to request one. 3) Educate others about the problem of marine debris, enhancing "voluntary compliance through awareness." 4) Get involved. Locate or start a coastal cleanup in your area. For Further Reading: Campbell, Lee Anne. "Plastics Are Forever." Nor'easter. Fall 1989. Weisskopf, Michael. "Plastic reaps a grim harvest in the oceans of the world." Smithsonian. March 1988. R. Jude Wilber. "Plastic in the North Atlantic." Oceanus. Fall 1987. O'Hara, Kathryn J., Suzanne Iudicello, and Rose Bierce. "A Citizens Guide to Plastics in the Ocean: More Than a Litter Problem." Washington, D.C.: Center for Marine Conservation, 1988. Plastics in the Marine Environment: A Technical Perspective Tony L. Andrady PhD Center for Engineering Technology RTI Internationl, Durham, NC 27709 USA The marine resource covering 70 percent of the earths surface is a key asset in the biosphere. Of the nearly 1.5 million species known, nearly a quarter million live in the worlds oceans. More importantly, nearly 50 percent of the global primary production (amounting to 45 x 10 15 g/yr) takes place in the upper stratum of sea water. The health of the marine food web and the fisheries resources invariably depend upon the long-term viability of the autotrophic algae and the zooplankton primary consumers in the food pyramid. Pollution from land-based sources, solar UV irradiation, and global warming can interfere with the plankton species that form the foundation of the food web, adversely affecting the delicate balance in the marine ecosystem.

Plastics represent the latest contaminant in the marine environment. However, plastics without doubt represent a uniquely valuable material particularly in construction, packaging and fishing gear applications. The global as well as the national trend has been for consistent growth in the use of plastics consumption. In applications where the use of plastics lead to waste reduction or reduce the burning of fossil energy, this growth is environmentally desirable. In other areas such as in marine applications, the increased use of plastics has lead to negative environmental impacts. Being a particularly efficient material in packaging and gear fabrication, it is very unlikely that the growth in plastic materials will plateau out or decrease in the foreseeable future. Most of the research on ghost fishing by derelict gear, entanglement of marine mammals or birds, and ingestion hazard to turtles or birds, has studied the negative impacts of plastics waste on these more visible marine species that are of commercial or aesthetic value. Plastic-related distress to over 250 species has been documented worldwide. The focus has very much been on larger species in surface waters or beaches, despite the fact that 99 percent of marine species live in the benthos. The impact of negatively buoyant plastic waste (such as nylon net fragments) on benthic species has remained virtually unaddressed. Plastics as a Waste Material No good estimate of the amount of plastic waste annually introduced into the marine environment is available. But, plastic waste is well known to result primarily from fishing-related activities, and from non-point source influx from beaches. Seafood presently represents 20% of the protein in global diet. As the population increases, more intensive fishing relying even more heavily on strong, light, and low-cost plastic gear will be increasingly used. Packaging, already accounting for nearly a third of plastic resin produced, is increasingly switching to plastics as the material of choice. Correspondingly, the plastic component of beach litter (already predominantly plastics) will increase over the years. A majority of the plastics found in beach litter or at sea belong to the several resin types used in packaging and in gear fabrication. Of these, the positively buoyant types are readily encountered in beach clean-up data as well as in floating debris counts. Nylons used extensively in gill nets and trawl fisheries, for instance negatively buoyant and therefore less likely to be seen in beach litter. The table 1 below lists the types of plastics likely to be found at sea, and their specific gravity. Table I. Plastics Likely to be Found in the Oceans Gear-related plastics Specific Gravity - polyethylene [0.92-0.97] - polypropylene [0.91] - nylon [1.14] - polyester [1.38] Packaging-related plastics - polyethylene, polypropylene - PVC - polyester - polystyrene (styrofoam) [<0.2]

Specific Gravity of Sea Water {T, Salinity, pressure} ~ 1.025 There are two clear differences between the fate of plastics debris in the ocean environment as opposed to on land environments. The rate of UV-induced photo-oxidative degradation of plastics floating or submerged at sea is very much slower than that exposed to the same solar radiation on land. Unlike on land there is no easy means of retrieval, sorting and recycling of plastic waste that enters into the ocean environment. These two factors generally result in extended lifetimes for plastics at sea. To further exacerbate the situation several observations have shown that floating plastics debris is rapidly inhabited by epibenthic foulant communities and tend to be negatively buoyant over a period of time. Once submerged, the plastic receives in even less of sunlight (the UV component of which is efficiently absorbed by the water column) and the surface coverage prevents even the little light that is available from reaching the surface of the plastic. The only exception to this observation is expanded polystyrene foam material that disintegrates faster at sea than on land; yet, whether the same holds for the microparticulate residue of polystyrene has not been investigated. Measuring Plastics Degradation Plastic debris generated on beaches can undergo some degradation prior to being washed into the oceans. It is important to realize that the measure of degradation is user-defined. There are various procedures available to measure degradation of plastics and the one that is adopted depends on the objectives of the experiment. For research focusing on the conventional entanglement or ingestion concerns, degradation of a plastic to the point of embrittlement is often adequate. As a plastic material is exposed to solar UV radiation its mechanical integrity decreases at a rate dictated by the temperature (hence the retarded breakdown in sea water that acts as a heat sink). This is best illustrated by the decrease in ultimate extensibility of the material; more degraded the plastic is less extensible it will be without breaking. At a high level of degradation the extensibility reduces to less than 5 percent and the material is weak and friable (and is said to be embrittled). Embrittled material poses no danger to large animals via entanglement or ingestion. A more rigorous criterion of degradation, based on the carbon cycle would require the polymer to be completely reduced to inorganic components via oxidative or biological degradation. The process is called mineralization. Materials such as cellulose as well as some synthetic polyesters (polyglycolic acid, polycaprolactone, etc.) are fully mineralized by this definition. However, some of the natural polymeric materials such as humus and lignins undergo very slow mineralization similar to most of the plastics. The fact that embrittlement has been achieved and the bulk plastic product (Styrofoam floats, or net fragments) has been fragmented to particles, does not remove it from the marine environment. Studies show that increased surface area of the particles do help these to biodegrade at an enhanced rate, but the material remains for extended periods of time in the marine environment. If

mineralization does take place, it must indeed be a slow process especially if it happens in the anoxic cold benthic environments. Exactly how long such a process would take is not known. In between these rather extreme criteria for degradation of plastics are measures that may require the plastic material to be reduced to a particle size that can be safely ingested by marine birds, or that is indistinguishable from the sand and pebbles in a beach setting. In practical terms these finding has serious implications: the plastic waste that has been introduced into the worlds oceans must accumulate for the most part intact and unmineralized in the marine environment. While the fate of such plastics is not clear, it is reasonable to expect at least some of it to continue disintegrating into microparticulate debris. That such microparticlulates exist in the oceans is of course well established; studies, both in the US and in Europe, have established their presence in the oceans. Recent reports even indicate an increase in their counts over the last two decades. However their quantification, especially in the estuarine regions and the continental shelf where most of primary production occurs has been a challenging task. Impact of Microparticles The full ecological consequences of the presence of microparticulate polymer in the marine environment are not clear. However, their interaction with filter feeders, specially the zooplankton species that are primary consumers, can be easily anticipated. Challenging the Antarctic krill and other zooplankton with plastic beads that are about 20 microns or so in size has demonstrated that these microparticulates are readily ingested by these organisms. They appear to ingest the particles unselectively, and the ingestion rates depend on the concentration of particles in the environment. Plastics are bio-inert and are not expected to be toxic to the animal in the conventional sense. While physical obstruction or indirect interference with physiology is always possible (as with sea birds showing satiation on ingesting plastics) the material will pass through the animal virtually unchanged. The concern, however, is that plastics exposed to sea water tends to concentrate toxic and nontoxic organic compounds present in the sea water at low concentrations. These, including PCBs, DDT, and nonylphenols, have very high partition coefficients and are very efficiently concentrated in the plastic material. This has been demonstrated effectively in Japan (by Hideshige Takada et.al. a presenter at this event). There are two key issues as yet unaddressed in the research literature. First, while fresh uncontaminated plastic miroparticles are readily ingested by zooplanktons, will an aged particle loaded with possibly toxic chemical compounds from sea water, be equally palatable to the organisms? Despite the unselective ingestion generally displayed by these organisms, avoidance of ingestion of toxic algae by the same species has been reported. The existence of a chemotactic safeguard mechanism that would make zooplankton reject the contaminated microparticles cannot be ruled out. Secondly, if such microparticles are ingested will the chemical components be bioavailable to the organism? If the compounds are bioavailable in the residence timescale within the gut region, then one needs to address the question of physiological consequences of the chemicals to the

zooplankton. From an ecological standpoint, the transfer coefficients for the chemical moving up the food pyramid need to be also evaluated. These questions remain unanswered in the literature. Conclusions Despite years of interest on the topic little research has been carried out by the government agencies or the plastics industry to address the key issues relating to plastics in the marine environment. Extensive documentation of entanglement, ingestion, and danger of plastic gear to vessels, has been achieved over the years. However, the focus has always been biased and limited to the visible fauna. The most serious threat, if any, of plastics in the marine environment is likely to be their impact on the very foundation of the food web - on the zooplanktons and other filter feeders. The possible impact plastic microparticles on the long-term sustainability of the marine food web needs to be unambiguously established.