MicrobeWorld

Specialist bacteria seem to be eating the plastic garbage we throw into the ocean. But whether they're cleaning up our poisons or just passing them back up the food chain remains to be seen. The ocean contains vast amounts of plastic, mostly as tiny shards floating just beneath the surface. Under an electron microscope, each scrap of "plastic confetti" becomes "an oasis, a reef of biological activity," says marine microbiologist Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.