Krill are capable of digesting microplastics before excreting them back into the environment in an even smaller form.
They may be at the base of the natural pecking order, however krill could end up being a mystery weapon in the battle against the developing danger of plastic contamination on the planet's seas.
New research Friday showed the tiny zooplankton are capable of digesting microplastics — under five millimetres (0.2 inches) — before excreting them back into the environment in an even smaller form.
Study author Amanda Dawson stumbled on the finding while working on a project involving microbeads — polyethylene plastic often used in cosmetics such as face scrubs — at the Australian Antarctic Division’s krill aquarium to check the toxic effects of pollution.
“We realized that krill actually break up plastic, it was amazing,” the researcher from Australia’s Griffith University told AFP.
“It’s difficult to know exactly what the implications of this could be, but the theory is that because plastics in the ocean are already degraded and more fragile, they would be even easier for krill to break up.”
The problem of plastic pollution is widespread, and rapidly getting worse.
Consistently, in excess of eight million tons winds up in the sea, costing billions of dollars in harm to marine biological communities and executing an expected one million ocean winged creatures, 100,000 ocean warm blooded animals and untold quantities of fish, contemplates have appeared.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last year cited one study that showed plastic could outweigh fish in 2050 if nothing was done.
Australian Antarctic Division krill biologist and study co-author So Kawaguchi said this was the first time scientists had examined microplastics digested by the crustaceans.
Published in Nature Communications, it found the fragments excreted were, on average, 78 percent smaller than the original beads with some reduced by 94 percent.
“It’s a new pathway for microplastics to interact with the ecosystem,” Kawaguchi said.