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What are small‐size microplastic distributions telling us?
Summary
This commentary discusses a study that found microplastics extending thousands of meters below the South Atlantic subtropical gyre, suggesting that standard surface net sampling has been missing a large fraction of small microplastics. The findings reshape understanding of where plastic goes in the ocean and why early estimates of 'missing plastic' may have been flawed.
Writing in this issue of Global Change Biology, Shiye Zhao and co-authors report a microplastic soup extending thousands of meters below the South Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. This discovery contributes two pieces to the missing plastic puzzle- (1) nets have been under-sampling the smallest microplastic size fraction, which is actually not missing when using high-volume filtration, and (2) small microplastics in particular find their way below the surface. But their results also contribute several new questions, because some of what they found is quite surprising. This article is a Research Article on Zhao et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.16089.