In a new study published in the Nature Ecology & Evolution journal on Monday, a team of researchers revealed that dozens of species of coastal invertebrate organisms have been able to survive and reproduce on plastic garbage that’s been floating in the ocean for years. More than 170 trillion plastic particles found in the ocean as pollution reaches 'unprecedented' levels Haram and her colleagues examined 105 items of plastic fished out of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between November 2018 and January 2019. A study published last month said that without urgent policy action, the rate at which plastics enter the oceans could increase by around 2