![]() ![]() “We are almost always the first humans to set eyes on these deeper reefs, and yet we see human-produced trash on every dive.” Dr Luiz Rocha Even the most remote and pristine reefs had plastic pollution, like uninhabited central Pacific atolls! The results were sobering - coral reefs exhibit higher levels of plastic and human-derived debris contamination compared to other surveyed marine ecosystems. To examine mesophotic coral reefs located at depths ranging from 30 to 150 meters (commonly known as the ‘twilight zone’), they used specialized diving equipment that only few scientific dive teams know how to operate. ![]() The researchers performed 1,231 meticulous transects over each habitat – including unoccupied atolls and reefs at depths of 150 meters. ![]() “Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing problems plaguing ocean ecosystems, and coral reefs are no exception.” Dr Hudson Pinheiro “From macroplastics that spread coral diseases to fishing lines that entangle and damage the structural complexity of the reef, decreasing both fish abundance and diversity, pollution negatively impacts the entire coral reef ecosystem.” “Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing problems plaguing ocean ecosystems, and coral reefs are no exception,” says Dr Hudson Pinheiro, the study’s lead author, a biologist at the Center for Marine Biology of the University of São Paulo, and a postdoctoral fellow at the California Academy of Sciences. To figure this out, a team of scientists set out to study 84 coral ecosystems in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans to look for man-made debris. ![]()
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