Plastic waste associated with disease on coral reefs
By Joleah B. Lamb, B. Willis, Evan A. Fiorenza, Courtney S. Couch, R. Howard, Douglas N. Rader, J. True, L. Kelly, Awaludinnoer Ahmad, J. Jompa and 1 more. Science, 2018
698 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Corals wrapped in plastic Coral reefs provide vital fisheries and coastal defense, and they urgently need protection from the damaging effects of plastic waste. Lamb et al. surveyed 159 coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific region. Billions of plastic items were entangled in the reefs. The more spikey the coral species, the more likely they were to snag plastic. Disease likelihood increased 20-fold once a coral was draped in plastic. Plastic debris stresses coral through light deprivation, toxin release, and anoxia, giving pathogens a foothold for invasion. Science, this issue p. 460 Plastic waste entanglement exacerbates the risk of coral disease outbreaks and consequent damage to reefs, as well as the loss of fisheries and coastal protection. Plastic waste can promote microbial colonization by pathogens implicated in outbreaks of disease in the ocean. We assessed the influence of plastic waste on disease risk in 124,000 reef-building corals from 159 reefs in the Asia-Pacific region. The likelihood of disease increases from 4% to 89% when corals are in contact with plastic. Structurally complex corals are eight times more likely to be affected by plastic, suggesting that microhabitats for reef-associated organisms and valuable fisheries will be disproportionately affected. Plastic levels on coral reefs correspond to estimates of terrestrial mismanaged plastic waste entering the ocean. We estimate that 11.1 billion plastic items are entangled on coral reefs across the Asia-Pacific and project this number to increase 40% by 2025. Plastic waste management is critical for reducing diseases that threaten ecosystem health and human livelihoods.
Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a1123b49d310d019bcaffe15172148da964b0b85
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Citations in the corpus
- Sexual production of corals for reef restoration in the Anthropocene (2020, background): “Some plastics have been associated with coral diseases (Lamb et al. 2018), and microplastics generated from the breakdown of plastics in the marine environment impact 214 Randall et al.: Coral sexual production for reef restoration many organisms, including corals (Hall et al. 2015, Reichert et al.…”
- Global ecological, social and economic impacts of marine plastic. (2019, background): “Colonisation of plastic provides a mechanism for movement of organisms between biomes, thus potentially increasing their biogeo-graphical range and risking the spread of invasive species and disease (Lamb et al., 2018).”
- A Global Perspective on Microplastics (2020, background): “While they did not focus on microplastics, Lamb et al. (2018) estimated that coral reefs from the Asia Pacific region were entangled with 11.1 billion plastic items.”
- Morphological traits can track coral reef responses to the Anthropocene (2019, background): ““Spikier” morphologies also trap more plastic debris, which is linked to disease and tissue damage (Lamb et al., 2018).”
- Coral reef ecology in the Anthropocene (2019, background): “Finally, we question whether traditional coral reef paradigms capture this new interwoven reality and stress the need for a “ socio‐ecological macroecology ” approach to develop paradigms for coral reefs in the Anthropocene.”