The Pacific garbage patch is now hosting a new threat

Unnatural habitat: About eight million metric tons of plastics are thrown into the ocean every year, according to studies published in scientific journals. Huge concentrations of plastic are carried by currents to form massive collections of waste, such as the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. — Getty Images/TNS

THE infamous Pacific garbage patch is changing the balance of life in the seas. At least 37 species of coastal creatures – worms, crabs, shellfish and the like – have colonised the Texas-sized plastic tangle, turning it into an unnatural floating habitat.

The findings, reported recently in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, show life’s tenacity, with a variety of castaway creatures treating our trash as their own Noah’s Ark. But it’s not something to celebrate. It should be a wake-up call to create stronger, more binding prohibitions against using the oceans as a place to dump plastic.