Photo
BBDO/Weston/Jamieson
THE beautiful, interlocking, armoured plates of this amphipod are meant to keep it safe from predators and other threats. But they can鈥檛 protect it from plastic pollution, which is how this creature got its name.
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Eurythenes plasticus is a newly described shrimp-like species found between 6 and 7 kilometres down in the Pacific Ocean鈥檚 Mariana trench, where Earth鈥檚 deepest waters are found.
, UK, and her colleagues used baited traps to catch several specimens, which can grow up to 5 centimetres long. Analysing their hindguts revealed that one of them, a juvenile, had consumed a microplastic particle very similar to polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, a plastic often used to make water bottles and fabrics.
The team named the animals plasticus to send the message that even sea creatures living so deep are exposed to this pollution. And if a juvenile consumed plastic, this indicates that such scavengers could be 鈥渋ngesting microplastics throughout their life, which could pose acute and chronic health effects鈥�, says the team (Zootaxa, doi.org/dp3m).
While the effects of exposure to microplastics haven鈥檛 been studied in deep-sea amphipods, there is evidence that 鈥� polypropylene fibres 鈥� increases mortality in Pacific sand crabs.
