![]() ![]() MORE SURPRISING OCEAN LIFE: Scientists Discover Pristine Deep-Sea Coral Reefs in Galápagos Marine Reserve ‘Teeming With Life’ “These places that we’ve been calling garbage patches are really important ecosystems that we know very little about.” ![]() “We’ve seen so many pictures of plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but we’ve never seen any pictures of life there.” “We saw just massive amounts of life at the surface,” study senior author Rebecca Helm, a marine biologist at Georgetown University, told National Geographic. Velella blue jellies (known as by-the-wind sailors) By Denis Riek via The Global Ocean Surface Ecosystem Alliance, CC license Violet snails, blue button jellies, by-the-wind sailor jellies, and sea slugs called blue sea dragons that hunt the tentacles of man o’ wars to use as makeshift protection, are all found there in large numbers. This is not because of, but in spite of, the trillions of pieces of plastic, as these living ocean hitchhikers evolved to use ocean gyres and currents to get around over thousands of years. They found greater concentrations of wildlife inside the GPGP than on its periphery. Here's what it's up against.The work they did has now been published in the journal PLOS One.
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