Coastal sea creatures have been found living and reproducing on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, thousands of kilometres away from their natural habitat. The discovery could reshape our understanding of where coastal marine creatures can survive.

人们发现，沿海海洋生物在距离其自然栖息地数千公里远的大太平洋垃圾带上生活和繁殖。这一发现可能会重塑我们对沿海海洋生物生存环境的理解。

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a vast collection of waste – much of it plastic – located between Hawaii and California, covering an estimated 1.6 million square kilometres of ocean.

大太平洋垃圾带是一个巨大的垃圾集合体，--其中大部分是塑料--位于夏威夷和加利福尼亚之间，覆盖了大约160万平方公里的海洋。

Researchers have previously found ocean-dwelling marine species living around the patch, but now it seems that coastal creatures have also established a permanent home there.

研究人员此前曾在这片区域周围发现过海洋生物，但现在看来，沿海生物也在那里建立了永久的家园。

James Carlton at the Williams College and Mystic Seaport Museum in Connecticut and his colleagues collected 105 items of plastic waste from the garbage patch between November 2018 and January 2019. More than 70 per cent of the plastic items had evidence of coastal species living on them, with organisms including shrimp-like arthropods, sea anemones and molluscs identified. In fact, coastal species outnumbered pelagic species that live in the open sea by a ratio of 3 to 1, the team found.

威廉姆斯学院和康涅狄格州神秘海港博物馆的詹姆斯·卡尔顿和他的同事们，在2018年11月至2019年1月期间从垃圾带收集了105件塑料垃圾。超过70%的塑料制品上有沿海物种生活的证据，其中包括类似虾的节肢动物、海葵和软体动物。事实上，研究小组发现，沿海物种的数量超过了生活在公海中的远洋物种，其比例为3:1。

The coastal creatures seemed to be permanently living and reproducing on the plastic patch, says Carlton. “These are species that have rafted out with coastal debris and have now successfully found essentially a novel habitat out there,” he says.

卡尔顿说，这些沿海生物似乎长期生活在塑料片上并进行繁殖。他说:“这些是与沿海废弃物一起漂流出来的物种，现在已经成功地在那里找到一个新的栖息地。”

The discovery upends the assumption that coastal species couldn’t survive out in the open ocean and helps to solidify evidence that new types of ecological “neopelagic communities” are establishing themselves on plastic debris in the open ocean. “This has reset my thinking about how coastal species can survive in an environment in which they’ve not evolved,” says Carlton.

这一发现推翻了沿海物种无法在公海生存的假设，并有助于巩固新型生态“新远洋群落”正在公海塑料碎片上建立自己的证据。卡尔顿说:“这让我重新思考了沿海物种如何在没有进化的环境中生存。”

We don’t yet know how this plastic ecosystem functions, including what the coastal creatures eat or how they interact with ocean-dwelling fish species.

我们还不知道这种塑料生态系统是如何运作的，包括沿海生物吃什么，以及它们如何与海洋鱼类相互影响。