of our consumption.
Posidonia oceanica, commonly known as Neptune grass or Mediterranean tapeweed, a type of seagrass that along the Spanish Mediterranean coast,
(Image Credit: Alberto Romeo).
This poem is inspired by recent research, which has found a dramatic increase in microplastics in seagrass soil since the 1970s.
Seagrass beds act as filters for coastal areas and can therefore capture particles, including microplastics, that travel from the land down into the seabed. Over time the sediments of seagrass soil stabilise and build up thick sediment layers that correspond to specific time periods. This means that seagrass beds can be used as an historical environmental archive, making them an extremely useful tool for studying the accumulation of microplastics over time. In this new study, researchers have succeeded in tracing plastic pollution since the 1930s and 1940s by analysing microplastics found in seagrass sediments at three locations along the Spanish Mediterranean coa