Some Marine Biologists Want Ocean Plastics to Stay Right Where They Are

Today in bizarre contrarian news, as Boyan Slat’s Ocean Cleanups zigzag the seas cleaning up humanity’s great mess, Georgetown University Marine Ecologist Rebecca Helm—a PhD with stints beneath her belt at such esteemed institutions as Brown University, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), The Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and so on—has put forth the curious perspective that ocean trash should stay right where it is.

“Some ocean cleanup projects could deprive the world of an entire ecosystem that we do not understand and may never be able to recover,” asserts Helm.

And she’s not alone, apparently. “This is not some random idea that has popped out of thin air. It’s rooted in fresh observations about how certain sea organisms seem to have settled into their new environment,” reports Earth.com.

Sure, we’ve all seen algae and barnacles and other growth bedazzling old oil jugs, stray lobster pots, and errant cooler lids. But are ocean plastics working like scuttled commercial vessels and retired subway trains as artificial reefs? Is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (and the handful of other gyres of polypropylene, polystyrene, polyester, and on, and on) serving marine critters in the same way that the Sargasso Sea is?

To clarify, no respected public institution has endorsed this opinion (as of yet), but the statement is backed up by some earlier research published in Frontiers’ Marine Science section in June of 2021, entitled “Relative Abundance of Floating Plastic Debris and Neuston in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean.”

Indeed, some creatures are learning to become copascetic with plastics, whether it be as shelter, hunting grounds, and, the study asserts, who knows what else?

Who else indeed, unless we let sleeping petrochemicals lie? It’s a curious concept. However a certain sea turtle, who may or may not still be reeling with trauma both physical and/or otherwise no thanks to a certain straw, might not find the prospects of testing it all that amusing.

Much as life finds a way, as much as life begets life, and however much plastic could do so, too, this whole theory might better be left to the imagination of the science-fiction writers of the world. But then we’re just surf writers. What do we know?