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Plastic marine debris is one of the world’s newest ecosystems, and scientists have just begun to understand how microbes are settling into their new island homes.

At the end of a dock in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, Erik Zettler hauls up a streaming mass of glistening green and brown sea life. Without a single errant splash on his freshly pressed khakis, he ties the whole pile to the underside of a rickety A-frame ladder serving as a temporary rack.

Somewhere, suspended within a steel, urn-shaped basket hidden underneath the thick carpet of gooey, colonizing sea squirts and sponges, there’s evidence of one of our planet’s newest ecosystems: The Plastisphere. 

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