By, Catherine Griffin, Science World Report
]It turns out that corals are making use of the plastic in our oceans-sort of. Scientists have found that corals commonly found on the Great Barrier Reef are actually eating plastic.
In this case, the corals are consuming microplastics, which are tiny fragments of plastic in the environment that are a widespread contaminant in marine ecosystems, particularly in inshore coral reefs. Despite the proliferation of microplastics, though, their impact on marine ecosystems is poorly understood.
“Corals are non-selective feeders and our results show that they can consume microplastics when the plastics are present in seawater,” said Mia Hoogenboom