11 Billion Pieces of Plastic Are Riddling Corals With Disease
In Asia-Pacific reefs, the majority of corals with junk on them have some kind of infection.
Coral reefs are meant to be riots of color, but those that Joleah Lamb studied in the Indo-Pacific were colorful for all the wrong reasons. Their branches and crevices were frequently festooned with plastic junk. “We came across chairs, chip wrappers, Q-tips, garbage bags, water bottles, old nappies,” she says. “Everything you see on the beach is probably lying on the reef. And it seems like it’s getting worse.”
Whenever Lamb or her colleagues from Cornell University found a piece of plastic, they would
