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This story is part of Planet or Plastic?-our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

This story appears in the May 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Not long ago I went snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean, a half mile off the southwest coast of Oahu. The flanks of the Hawaiian island are steep there, and the bottom quickly disappeared beneath us as we motored out to the site. Looking back, I could see the green slopes of the Waianae Range rising to 4,000 feet behind the beach. Normally the mountains shield the water here from the trade winds. But on that day a breeze created a light chop that nearly obscured what I had come to see: a thin, oily slick of surface water, rich in organic particles, in which newborn fish were feeding and struggling to survive their first precarious weeks.

Plunging my face into the sheen, I found myself looking inside a fish nursery: The water was dotted with life you would ordinarily never notice. Fish eggs drifted like tiny lanterns, their yolk sacs glowing in the sunlight. Fish larvae small as ladybugs darted about. A sergeant major damselfish the size of a dime appeared huge by comparison as it fluttered past. Below us, a school of 12-inch, bigeye scad-like mackerel but with enormous eyes-fed on everything that had the misfortune of being small.

My guides that day, oceanographer Jamison Gove and fish biologist Jonathan Whitney of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu, are nearly three years into a research project that aims to make sense of this chaotic scene. The larval stage is the "black box" of fisheries science: Fertilized eggs go in, and young fish come out-but what happens inside remains sketchy. The larval fish are so small and fragile they're exceedingly difficult to study. The overwhelming majority will never become adults. Yet fish populations around the world, and the animals that eat them, depend on just how many larval fish make it, and in what condition.

What Gove and Whitney have found lately-and what David Liittschwager 's photographs of their water samples document-is that fish and wholesome fish food are not the only things collecting in the slicks off Hawaii. Microplastics, tiny shreds of human trash, are there as well, and in such abundance that larval fish are eating them in their first days of life.

For newborn fish, to eat is to live another day; if their first meal is plastic, they're not consuming the calories they need to sustain them until the second. "They've beaten a lot of odds to get this far," Gove says. "They hatched, they found the slick, they're feeding and growing. This is one-tenth of one percent that made it this far; they're the lucky ones. And now plastics are coming in."

"The most critical moment is that first feeding," Whitney says. "If they get a piece of plastic, that could be it. A single thread in the stomach of a larval fish is potentially a killer."

Plastic waste, mostly from rivers or careless dumping on land, washes into the oceans at an average rate of about nine million tons a year, according to a 2015 study by Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia. The visible trash, along with heartbreaking images of its impact on everything from turtles to birds to whales, has generated a public outcry. But sunlight, wind, and waves eventually break down ocean plastic to bits that are barely visible. One of the biggest unknowns-and concerns-is the effect that these microplastics, smaller than a fifth of an inch, might be having on fish.

Fish provide critical protein to nearly three billion people and countless seabirds and other marine animals. But fish stocks worldwide have fallen by half since 1970, surveys show. Populations of the largest predatory fish, such as tuna, have fallen even more. The decline is largely because of overfishing, but pollution and waters warmed and acidified by climate change are having a growing impact.

As long ago as the early 1970s, scientists were finding plastic pellets-the material used to manufacture plastic goods-in the stomachs of fish caught off New England and Great Britain. More recent studies have documented the presence of even smaller microplastic particles in a growing array of adult fish. Larval fish have been studied much less but are likely to be more vulnerable to microplastics, as they are to everything else. "Any stressor will likely have more of an impact on early life stages than later life stages," says Susanne Brander, a toxicologist at Oregon State University who is studying how plastics might affect the growth of fish.

Most ocean fish are terrible parents. A few species guard their eggs on the seafloor; others protect them inside their mouths. But most fish release thousands or even millions of eggs and sperm into the wide ocean and never see their offspring. When eggs hatch a day or two later, they're on their own.

Newly hatched fish look misshapen, heads oversize, tails barely formed. They have to eat like crazy to grow into their body. Whereas human babies develop in the shelter of the uterus, fish mainly develop after they emerge into an unforgiving world.

"They hatch super early," Whitney says. "They have small brains; some fins aren't even formed. Their liver isn't fully developed. Or their hearing or seeing. They are only partially developed, but they are actively swimming, eating, fending for themselves."

Predators or starvation will get most of them. "That's why fish spawn so many eggs," says Su Sponaugle, an Oregon State University marine ecologist who specializes in the early life stages of fish. "They have to hedge their bets."

The larval phase is treacherous every step of the way-starting with the need for the larvae to find food, which they do in a surface slick. Surface slicks form mostly in coastal regions around the world, wherever currents, tides, or subsurface waves cause water to converge and concentrate the organic gunk that floats in it. Slicks can be seen by satellite as long, squiggly ribbons that run parallel to coasts.

Some larval fish swim to slicks, some drift, as do eggs not yet hatched. Predators converge on slicks too. If a baby fish manages to avoid being eaten and to find enough food, it will be about two inches long when it heads back to its permanent habitat-a reef, say. The right current will transport it there, the wrong one out to sea.

"If you miss an island, good luck with that. If there's no reef, you cannot complete your life cycle," Sponaugle says. Life for larval fish was a crapshoot even before they met our plastic trash.

Off Hawaii, a single eight-minute tow of the NOAA team's net yields a plethora of living organisms and plastic.

Pushed into a surface slick by converging currents, they're separated in the lab by a technician with tweezers. A computer program counts the plastic pieces and measures each one; the technician uses a microscope to identify the creatures.

Whitney and Gove came to ocean science and Hawaii by happenstance. Whitney, 37, grew up in New Jersey with a kid's plan to become a veterinarian. He arrived in Honolulu in 2006 as a volunteer for a census of humpback whales. In graduate school he worked his way down to the tiniest organisms of the sea.

Gove, 40, grew up in San Diego and learned to surf before he could read. A summer job with NOAA convinced him the ocean was more than a playground. After helping to cut 70 tons of abandoned fishing gear from Hawaiian coral reefs, Gove enrolled in graduate school to become an oceanographer. He specialized in how winds, tides, and waves affect ocean ecosystems and surface slicks in particular.

Slicks are transient-they break up in rough weather-which makes studying them a challenge. Gove and Whitney took me to see a slick off Oahu because it was close to their lab, but their main research site is on the west side of Hawaii, the Big Island, where two large volcanoes provide an even better wind shadow than Oahu's Waianae Range. The steep drop-off of the seafloor has proved to be a surprise bonus: The slicks attract an oceanic convention of not only reef fish but also fish from greater depths, including commercially important mahi-mahi, swordfish, and marlin.

"One of the coolest things we found was the diversity," Whitney says. "We've got deep-sea fish, mid-ocean fish, and reef fish, all interacting at the surface for the first few weeks of their lives. It was incredibly unique. I can't think of any other place on Earth where babies from different areas share nursery grounds."

He and Gove expected to find plastics in their slicks; the Hawaiian chain is in the drift pattern of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But they never intended to join the growing hunt for microplastics that has overtaken the work of so many marine scientists. Their focus was basic research on larval fish. Their samples contained such loads of plastic, however, that they had to revise their project.

The preliminary results indicate that slicks concentrate plastics even more than they do larval fish. In the water outside slicks, Whitney and Gove found nearly three times more larval fish than microplastics. Inside slicks, the situation was reversed: Microplastics outnumbered larval fish by more than seven to one. On average there was almost 130 times as much plastic inside slicks as outside.

"We didn't have any idea we would find such concentrations," Gove says. One of the first fish they dissected had plastic in its gut.

What harm such plastic is causing is still unsettled science. But in lab tests, some clues have emerged. Plastic reduces the appetites and growth rates of fish that consume it. That could affect reproduction and ultimately population size. "The larger a female fish is, the more eggs she can carry and the higher number of offspring she can produce," Brander says.

In their lab, Whitney and Gove oversaw the dissection of more than 650 larval fish, most of them between one-third of an inch to half an inch in length. They found plastic in 8.6 percent of the ones caught in slicks. That doesn't sound like much, and outside slicks the percentage was less than half that-but scientists know that small changes in the survival of larval fish can translate into large changes in fish populations, with cascading effects up the food chain.

The NOAA researchers found tiny blue strands of polyethylene and polypropylene, commonly used to make fishing gear, in the stomachs of larval swordfish, marlins, and five other species. The strands look a lot like the food that larval fish crave: tiny copepods, bluish crustaceans with long, skinny antennae.

In larval mahi-mahis, Whitney and Gove found no plastic. They're not sure why. Was it because eyesight develops earlier in mahi-​mahis, making them better than other species at distinguishing plastic from prey? Or was it because the mahi-mahis that ate plastic had died and escaped detection?

Flying fish appear to eat plastic especially frequently. Besides serving as prey for larger fish, including sharks, flying fish are primary prey for 95 percent of Hawaiian seabirds. Are birds ingesting plastic with their flying fish, and is that affecting them? For every question the researchers answer, Gove says, 10 new ones come up.

The smallest fish he and Whitney found with plastic in its stomach was just a quarter inch long, about six millimeters. But the plastic fibers the fish are eating are smaller.

"They are less than one millimeter, things you can barely see with the naked eye," Whitney says. That is "the shocking part: The pieces we can't even see are the problem."

In 2018 David Liittschwager photographed jellyfish for the October issue; staff writer Laura Parker wrote the June cover story on plastic trash.

The nonprofit National Geographic Society, working to conserve Earth's resources, helped fund this article.

The National Geographic Society and Sky Ocean Ventures have launched the Ocean Plastic Innovation Challenge, which asks problem solvers around the globe to develop novel solutions to tackle the world's plastic waste crisis. Have an idea? Submit your solution by June 11 at oceanplastic-challenge.org.

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Microplastic is leading to big problems for fish in the ocean

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Newborn fish are mistaking tiny bits of trash for food. If they die, there'll be fewer big fish-and that could rattle the food chain.

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When we wash our clothes, the microfabrics are removed from the piece of clothing, and since having a washing machine that can filter it is too expensive to afford, most people's washing machine would release the microfibers into the oceans as it was not filtered.

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microplastics like microfibers that are shredded from clothings while being washed in the washing machine goes down into the drain and are being filtered, however, the filtering pores are too bing to filter the microfibers properly. As a result, the microfibers will flow to a discharge point at a nearby marine habitat, entering the ecosystem

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Micro-plastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimetres long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life. Examples of primary micro-plastics include micro-beads found in personal care products, plastic pellets used in industrial manufacturing, and plastic fibres used in synthetic textiles (e.g., nylon).

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microplastics are tiny pieces of plastic that are smaller than 5mm. examples of them are synthetic fibers in our clothes like a fleece jacket

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microplastics are objects smaller than 5 millimetres. they can be found in the plastic fibres synthetic clothes like nylon and single-use plastics.

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Microplastics enter the ecosystem through drainage as many of the products we use daily are flushed down toilets. Microfibres are released into waterways when we wash our clothes in the washing machine. They are too small to be filtered out by waste water plants and end up being consumed by small marine species, eventually even ending up in our food chain.

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Find ONE more video that is relevant to microplastic and you can learn from it.
Find TWO articles/news on microplastics that will make you want to find out more about it.

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Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life. Some examples of microplastics include tyres, road markings, and marine coatings.

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microplastic are tiny pieces of plastic smaller than 5mm that come from items like plastic bags, synthetic pieces of clothing, shards and microbeads which pollutes the environment and harms animals, especially marine life when the marine animals eat the microplastics.

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Everything that falls of our clothes when washing is flushed down the drain, the filters are often too large to stop the microplastics from passing through and flowing to a discharge point at a nearby marine habitat.

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they could enter by getting washed down the drain after use, and will then end up in lakes, oceans and seas. littering is also a cause as wind or rainwater would carry them into the ecosystem through drains.

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microplastics like microfibres may fall off plastic products like synthetic clothes while they are being washed. these microfibres then enter the waterways, being unable to be filtered out by sewage treatment plants as they are too small. the microplastics may be consumed by marine animals as the water containing them enters the ocean.

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microplastics enter the ecosystem through waterways while we wash our clothes in the washing machine. Since the microplastics are really small, they do not get filtered out thus they end up in the ocean.

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Micro fibres and micro plastic shed from pieces of clothing when washed are being flushed down the drain due to the lack of filters in washing machines. Filters in the drain are unable to filter the micro fibres as the pores of the filter are too big. Hence, Micro fibres are being released into the ocean, entering the ecosystem.

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https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/how-does-plastic-end-ocean

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/microplastics.html#:~:text=Most%20plastics%20in%20the%20ocean,many%20health%20and%20beauty%20products.

https://youtu.be/49OJoTsZYO0

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Even if you live hundreds of miles from the coast, the plastic you throw away could make its way into the sea. Once the plastic is in the ocean, it decomposes very slowly, breaking into tiny pieces known as microplastics, which can enter the marine food chain and become incredibly damaging to sea life. The main source of ocean plastic pollution is land-based-80% of plastic in the ocean originates on land. But what does that really mean? Where is it coming from?

There are three main ways plastic ends up in the oceans:

Plastic you put in the bin ends up in landfill. When rubbish is being transported to landfill, plastic is often blown away because it's so lightweight. From there, it can eventually clutter around drains and enter rivers and the sea this way.

Litter dropped on the street doesn't stay there. Rainwater and wind carries plastic waste into streams and rivers, and through drains. Drains lead to the ocean!

Careless and improper waste disposal is also a big contributor - illegal dumping of waste adds greatly to the plastic surge in our seas.

Many of the products we use daily are flushed down toilets, including wet wipes, cotton buds and sanitary products. Microfibres are even released into waterways when we wash our clothes in the washing machine. They are too small to be filtered out by waste water plants and end up being consumed by small marine species, eventually even ending up in our food chain.

A positive move in recent months was a ban on microbeads in rinse-off cosmetic and cleaning products introduced by the UK Government, so that these small plastic beads will no longer get washed down the sink and out into our oceans, but there are many more items that can also contribute to the problem.

The bottom line

How does plastic get into the ocean? The bottom line is us. Whether we mean to litter or not, there's always a chance the plastic we throw away could make it into the sea, and from there who knows? Maybe as far as the Arctic.

Big changes start with small steps and we all have the power to make a difference. What will you do to start cutting the plastic in your life?

We're working with Sky to protect and restore our amazing oceans. Find out more about Sky Ocean Rescue's fight against plastic pollution.

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Ever wondered how the plastic you use every day ends up in the sea? Learn more about this global crisis and what we can do to help.

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Microplastics are widely distributed in the marine environment, because of their small particle sizes; they are easily eaten by marine life, and produce a series of toxic effects, including inhibition of growth and development.

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Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic that are less than 5 millimeters long. They can be found in items such as synthetic clothing, car tyres and marine coating.

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when marine animals such as fishes eat the microplastic, it will eventually harm us in the end since we eat things like seafood and the microplastic enter our body, which might cause certain side effects since microplastics can lead to poisonous side effects

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Because of how small microplastics are, they are easily eaten by the marine life, such as fish and produces toxics.  The toxics might be eaten by us when we eat the fish with microplastics inside their bodies

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microplastics could be consumed by the marine life in the ecosystem and die of inability to grow or they could make its way up the food chain and be passed on to predators eating the microfibers in the organisms and eventually reach us.

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When a fish absorbs the microplastics by eating them, they can experience health problems which can be fatal.

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Most clothes are made using microplastics, as tiny woven strands of plastic. When doing laundry, these strands fall of the clothes and enter the drainage system. As the pores of the filters in this drainage system are too large to filter the microplastics, these plastics are washed away into the ocean, where they are consumed by the living creatures inside. Thus, microplastics enter the ecosystem.

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microplastics may be consumed by marine life as they can be found in the ocean easily due to their small size. when we consume seafood with microplastics in them, we may be affected by the toxins found in the microplastics as well.

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https://www.ecowatch.com/microplastics-toxin-magnet.html

https://www.chemeurope.com/en/news/1174964/risks-from-microplastics-public-perception-not-in-line-with-scientific-studies.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiEBEGKQp_I

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Microplastics are everywhere, from Mount Everest to the Arctic, from dinner plates to baby diapers. But is this ubiquitous pollution actually a danger for human health?

A new study from the University of Tel Aviv presents solid evidence that it is. The researchers found that ocean microplastics act as a "magnet" for toxic organic substances, gathering them in one place and increasing their toxicity by a factor of 10.

"[I]n this study we showed that even very low concentrations of environmental pollutants, which are non-toxic to humans, once adsorb[ed by] the microplastic result in significant increase in toxicity," study co-author Dr. Ines Zucker of the School of Mechanical Engineering and the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences at Tel Aviv University said in a university press release published by Phys.org.

The research, published in Chemosphere this month, helps to confirm one of the major concerns about ocean plastic pollution. This is that toxins that adhere to plastics will work their way up the marine food web to humans. A recent study found that three-fourths of commercially fished species had ingested plastic. However, the exact health risks of human exposure have remained unclear.

To help clarify the issue, the Israeli research team modeled how marine microplastics interact with triclosan, an antibiotic and antifungal agent that was banned in the U.S. for toiletries in 2016 over health concerns, as Haaretz reported. They found that the plastics absorbed more triclosan after they had been oxidized, a proxy for environmental weathering, the press release explained. They also found that triclosan-contaminated plastics had a greater impact on human cells than either triclosan or microplastics separately.

"[F]or the first time we are presenting a complete 'life cycle' of microplastics: from the moment of their release into the environment, through the adsorption of environmental pollutants and up to their joint toxicity in humans," study co-author and Ph. D. student Andrey Eitan Rubin said in the press release.

The research comes on the heels of other recent studies showing microplastics having a negative impact on human cells. Another study from December found that microplastics could kill human cells at "environmentally relevant" concentrations. Other research has shown microplastics to be capable of changing cell shape, declustering lung cells and crossing the blood-brain barrier in mice. But this study focuses specifically on how microplastics interact with other toxins to cause harm.

"After the environmental pollutants adsorb to the microplastic, the pre-loaded particle may reach the digestive tract through the ingestion of contaminated food and water where it releases the toxins in close proximity to the cells of the digestive tract, thus increasing the toxicity of these substances," Zucker said in the press release. "This is another painful reminder of the dire consequences of polluting the marine and terrestrial environment with hazardous industrial waste, which has unfortunately been saturated with plastic in recent decades."

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Microplastics Could Harm Humans by Acting as Toxin 'Magnet,' Study Finds - EcoWatch

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Microplastics are everywhere, from Mount Everest to the Arctic, from dinner plates to baby diapers. But is this ubiquitous pollution actually a danger for human health? A new study from the University of Tel Aviv presents solid evidence that it is.

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Microplastics are tiny plastic particles less than five millimeters in size. They can be found in items such as tyres, synthetic textiles and city dust.
https://sustainability.yale.edu/explainers/yale-experts-explain-microplastics#:~:text=Once%20released%20or%20broken%20away,%2C%20sea%20turtles%2C%20and%20birds.

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Environmental health expert Leigh Shemitz and green chemist Paul Anastas walk us through a tiny problem with big environmental consequences.

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Microplastics are easily eaten by marine life in the ecosystem and they usually die due to the inability to grow or they would make its way up the food chain and get eaten by larger animals and eventually to us. When humans consume microplastics, ingested microplastic particles can physically damage organs and leach hazardous chemicals.

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Ying Qi (25) Muba (26) Aiyanna (27) Shernice (28)

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Ying Qi (25) Muba (26) Aiyanna (27) Shernice (28)

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Ying Qi (25) Muba (26) Aiyanna (27) Shernice (28)

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Ying Qi (25) Muba (26) Aiyanna (27) Shernice (28)