40 NEW SPECIES FOUND, BUT EVEN THEY ARE POISONED BY PLASTIC

AFTER the broadcast of Sir David Attenborough’s breathtaking documentary TV series Blue Planet II, the great environmentalist said: ‘Suddenly the world was electrified about the crime of chucking plastic into the ocean.’

Tragically, the Mariana Trench has not escaped this blight. For scientists found plastic in the gut of tiny amphipods (small crustaceans such as sand fleas) living four miles below the surface. The creatures contained polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic commonly used to make household items such as water bottles.

Dr Alan Jamieson, a marine ecology expert from Newcastle University, said: ‘We will never know how the presence of plastic might affect this animal’s feeding, mobility and reproduction because they are all contaminated.

‘We are polluting species even before we discover them.’

So far, explorer Victor Vescovo’s expeditions have discovered 40 new species, including a dumbo octopus that lives over a mile deeper than any previously known octopus. ‘That was a really cool moment in natural history,’ says Dr Jamieson, who is considered the world’s leading expert in the so-called hadal zone.

This is the biogeographic realm where there is no plant life because of the absence of light.

The zone is occupied chiefly by carnivorous animals that are often blind or have luminous organs structurally adapted to withstand the great pressures.

Addressing the discovery of a dumped Coca-Cola can on the sea bottom, Dr Jamieson says: ‘In the deep sea, I have seen a lot of cans and bottles, even books, railings, ceramic bowls, a lot of plastic bags, tarpaulins, ropes, string and, weirdly, a lot of old shoes.’

But he stresses that ‘nanoplastic’ invisible to the eye is ‘probably doing the most harm’.