Microplastics may slow the rate at which carbon is pulled from the sea surface to the depths

It turns out plastics in the ocean do more than suffocate turtles, fish and other marine life.

A new study co-authored by Northeastern researcher Aron Stubbins shows that microplastics may reduce the ability of the ocean to help offset the climate crisis by slowing down the rate at which carbon is taken from the sea surface to the depths.

For millennia, the ocean has been part of a carbon sink process in which dead phytoplankton clump together and fall into the deep ocean in showers of what look like "marine snow," says Stubbins, a professor of marine and environmental science.

The resulting carbon sequestration is a marine version of how trees and plants on terrestrial Earth take carbon from the atmosphere and store it in soil, he says.