Impact of Plastics on Marine Wildlife

Plastic has only been mass produced since approximately the 1950s, yet debris is now ubiquitous in aquatic and terrestrial environments, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and from the top of Mount Everest to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. Remarkably, our understanding of the impact all this debris is having on species, habitats, and the ecosystem as a whole is poorly understood. Much of what we do know has been documented for seabirds and remote islands.