Microalgae sticks to microplastics and transports them to the seabed. 'Science for Environment Policy'

International audience; Fragments of microplastics are readily incorporated into groups of microscopic algae, altering the rate at which the plastics move through seawater, a recent study has found. In laboratory tests, polystyrene microbeads, which usually sink to the bottom of seawater at a rate of 4mm a day, sank at a rate of several hundreds of metres a daywhen part of microalgae aggregates.