July 20, 2022 — Lost and discarded fishing “ghost gear” accounted for as much as 75 percent of plastic pollution found on the world’s coral reefs, according to a study, “Plastic pollution on the world’s coral reefs,” published 12 July in Nature.
Every one of the 85 coral reefs included in the global study was found polluted with plastic, including deeper reefs between 30 and 150 meters deep. Comoros was found to have the most-polluted reefs, with nearly 84,500 plastic items found per square kilometer, while the Marshall Islands had the least-polluted reefs at 580 pieces of plastic per square kilometer.