The Janitors Of The Sea

 

The Janitors of the Sea

Around eight million tons of plastic end up in the oceans every year even as humans spend millions of dollars cleaning up the mess.

Meanwhile, it turns out that nature has its own janitor – the so-called “Neptune balls,” Smithsonian Magazine reported.

These spherical objects are created when fibers of the Posidonia oceanica – a type of Mediterranean seagrass – get tangled up and form balls that look a bit like brown clumps of steel wool.

Despite their corny name, marine scientists discovered that the puffy spheres – including loose blades of seagrass – can trap small fragments of plastics and then wash ashore during storms.

In their study, a research team assessed the plastic collected in seagrass on four beaches on the Spanish island of Mallorca between 2018 and 2019. Their results showed that half of the loose seagrass leaf samples they collected contained up to 613 plastic items per one kilogram (2.2 pounds) of loose leaves.

However, a kilogram of Neptune balls collected nearly 1,500 pieces of plastic.

Lead author Anna Sanchez-Vidal told New Scientist that the seagrass has the potential to collect nearly 870 million pieces of plastic annually.

Therefore, “Strict measures should be taken to protect these systems,” she said.