Microplastic pollution in world’s oceans poses major threat to filter-feeding megafauna

Even as the world is waking up to the problems created by the massive amounts of plastic pollution in Earth’s oceans — and taking steps to address the issue — new research is shedding light on how detrimental that pollution is to marine wildlife. A study published in the journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution last month, for instance, looks at how filter-feeding marine animals like baleen whales, manta rays, and whale sharks are impacted by microplastics. Filter feeders face exceptionally high risks of exposure to plastic pollution in the oceans because many of them are found in some of the most polluted waters in the world, such as the Bay of Bengal, the Gulf of Mexico, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Coral Triangle, a geographical region that lies in the waters between Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines. A 2016 report by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation found that more than 8 million metric tons of plastic waste makes its way into the oceans every year, which works out to be roughly a garbage truck-full of plastic being dumped into the oceans every minute. What’s more, the report also determined that if we allow business-as-usual to continue, plastic pollution could find its way into our oceans at four times the current rate by 2050 — at which point the plastic in our oceans would weigh more than all of the fish combined. In response to this issue, more than 40 countries have joined the UN Environment Programme’s CleanSeas…

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