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    Home > Mar pollut bull: amazing! Coral loves plastic garbage!

    Mar pollut bull: amazing! Coral loves plastic garbage!

    • Last Update: 2017-11-16
    • Source: Internet
    • Author: User
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    Plastic waste is the main type of marine waste in China's coastal waters These plastic wastes discharged into the ocean are difficult to degrade, which has cursed the marine world for hundreds of years It is said that it will take hundreds of years for the marine plastic wastes to decompose completely These plastic wastes can pose a fatal threat to marine animals Every year, a large number of fish and seabirds die from eating plastic, which may cause malnutrition, intestinal obstruction, or chronic poisoning due to chemicals contained in plastic Turtles will swallow the floating plastic as jellyfish and eventually die of eating difficulties But we don't know how plastic can harm plankton and corals in the ocean Over the years, biologists and conservationists have agreed that most marine organisms will accidentally eat plastic, which seems too confused or hungry to avoid eating plastic waste More and more research shows that another more disturbing reason is that plastic invented by human beings promotes appetite "Plastics may be naturally delicious," said Austin S Allen, a doctoral student in marine science at Duke University Allen and Seymour were both major participants in the study Together with Professor Daniel rittschof, an American marine ecologist, they proved that coral reacts to plastic debris as if plastic were food The experiment consists of two parts: the first part is artificial feeding of corals The second part is to make coral grow in seawater tanks polluted by plastic particles with a diameter less than mm In the process of artificial feeding, the researchers took a piece of plastic debris or sand particles with pliers and placed them beside the coral When sand particles come close to their mouths, corals clean themselves with their little hairs But when a piece of plastic is close to their mouth, the tentacles of the coral insect quickly catch and stick the plastic, and the cnidoblasts release poison to anesthetize the "prey" and then start to enjoy the "delicious food" The researchers provided eight different materials of plastic particles, including polystyrene plastic, PVC plastic and so on As a result, more than 80% of the plastic particles were eaten by corals But in 10 trials, one coral tried to eat sand particles once Most of the time, corals spit out the ingested plastic in six hours But in dozens of experiments, about 8 percent of the plastic stayed in corals for 24 hours Plastic particles (blue) in corals (source: Marine Pollution Bulletin) corals don't hunt by sight because they don't have eyes So the tongue is the sensor that decides what tastes good Researchers have shown that plastics must contain chemicals that attract corals Some of the hundreds of plastic additives act as food attractants to attract corals to eat plastic The ocean has gradually become a large-scale garbage dump, with hundreds of thousands or even millions of tons of plastic garbage floating in some sea areas But there is no doubt that more plastic waste has been deposited in the depths of the ocean and even in remote corners The garbage we see with the naked eye is only a small part of it Robotic submersibles have found plastic bags at the deepest point in the Pacific Ocean Where explorers have not yet arrived, plastic has already arrived The scientists involved in the study all hope that their research will become an ecological call for people to discover the attraction of plastic ingredients to corals If the plastic is certain to contain food attractants, we should find them and remove them It is hoped that this will avoid the death of marine organisms due to the ingestion of plastic waste Paper link: http://
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