How Plastic Cleanup Threatens the Ocean’s Living Islands

Imagine you’re on a small boat in the middle of the open ocean, surrounded by what looks like a raft of plastic. Now flip the whole world upside down. You remain comfortably attached to your seat—the abyss towers above you, and all around, stretching up from the water’s surface, is an electric blue meadow of life. What you thought was plastic is actually a living island. This meadow is made of a diverse collection of animals. The most abundant are blue buttons and by-the-wind sailors, with bright blue bodies that dot the sky like suns, and deep purple snails found in patches so dense one scientist described collecting over a thousand in 20 minutes.

This is the neuston, a whole ecosystem living at the ocean’s surface. I once stumbled upon a raft of neuston when