Kristen Regan: Aurelia eviana
Print on aluminium (20" x 20")
From the series Plastisphere
I.
I've previously written about plastic eating bacteria [1], so torpedophiles will be aware of my interest in this subject and the manner in which, as Poly Styrene would say, the world turns day-glo [2] and organisms not only adapt to this fact, but are transformed by the increasing presence of phthalates, for example, in the (no longer quite so) natural environment [3].
No big surprise, then, that I should be fascinated by what is termed the plastisphere ... [4]
II.
The plastisphere is a term used to refer to an evolving marine ecosystem composed of various types of micro-organism that happily live in the artificial habitat created from plastic waste materials.
In 2010, it was estimated that up to 12 million tonnes of plastic waste found its way into the oceans - and I shouldn't think things have improved much (if at all) since this date. Not great for fish or marine birds and mammals, perhaps, but autotrophs, heterotrophs, and symbionts, love this shit!
Why? Because plastic debris differs from other floating materials that naturally occur; for example, being non-biodegradable, plastic provides a far more durable home and can transport the organisms living on it over extremely long distances, creating new opportunities.
Even certain insects have been able to flourish in the plastisphere, whereas life on the ocean waves had previously not been an option for them - and larger creatures too, such as crabs and jellyfish, are taking advantage of this brave new world, by rafting on plastic waste and going with the flow.
I don't know if this is a good thing. But it is an astonishing thing - the rapid evolution of a synthetic ecosystem or plasticised marine environment - and it's happening whether we like it or not. And who knows, maybe this new Eden and its microbial inhabitants will one day play a crucial role in life's survival on this planet ...
Notes
[1] See: Watching the World Turn Day-Glo: Notes on Plastic Eating Bacteria (19 April 2019): click here.
[2] I'm referring here to the classic punk single by X-Ray Spex, 'The Day the World Turned Day-Glo', from the album Germ Free Adolescents (EMI, 1978). Click here to watch the band - fronted by Poly Styrene who wrote the track - perform it on Top of the Pops.
[3] See the post: Plastic Ants (There Might Come a Day When They're Treading on You) (10 April 2021): click here.
[4] The plastisphere was first described by a research team consisting of Dr.
Linda Amaral-Zettler (from the Marine Biological Laboratory), Dr. Tracy
Mincer (from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) and Dr. Erik Zettler
(from the Sea Education Association). Using high-powered microscopes and DNA sequencing techniques, they identified the organisms colonising plastic samples gathered from multiple locations in the Atlantic Ocean. Since then, there has a been a huge amount of
research published on this topic and it is now generally accepted that microbial diversity within the plastipshere is far greater (and more complex) than anyone might previously have imagined (particularly, it seems, on blue-coloured plastic).
See: Erik R. Zettler, Tracy J. Mincer, and Linda A. Amaral-Zettler, 'Life in the "Plastisphere": Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris', Environmental Science and Technology, (June 2013), 47 (13), pp. 7137-7146.
