Welcome to the plastisphere

SINCE 2008 geologists have been mulling over the idea of the Anthropocene, a proposed new epoch in the history of the Earth that would encompass the years in which people have had profound effects on the planet’s workings. Most often, discussion of the Anthropocene revolves around how atmospheric chemistry has changed since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Sometimes the effects of new terrestrial ecosystems, in the form of fields, pastures and plantations, are also considered. To date, though, how the Anthropocene has created new ecosystems in the oceans as well as on land has not been much examined.

Such ecosystems are, nevertheless, emerging—as Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, and Linda Amaral-Zettler of the Marine Biological Laboratory, also in Woods Hole, describe in Environmental Science and Technology. The malign effect of floating plastic debris on seabirds, turtles and other sea creatures is well known. But, as Dr Mincer and Dr Amaral-Zettler have discovered, plastic debris also provides a new habitat for organisms small enough to take advantage of it.