Perils of a plastic sea

Emma Hope - 

CSIRO researcher Julia Reisser has been sailing Tasmania's coastline investigating floating plastics that can be fatal to sea turtle hatchlings.

As part of her work to create the first map showing the distribution of floating marine plastics in Australian waters, Ms Reisser and other researchers were working from Marine National Facility vessel the Southern Surveyor.

"The early life of sea turtles occurs at the ocean's surface, where there's an increasing amount of floating plastics that are proving fatal to hatchlings," PhD student Ms Reisser said.

She has been studying sea turtles for nine years and in 2010 broadened her research to include marine plastics.

"My work is identifying the places contributing most to the increase in plastics in Australia's oceans and how this links to sea turtle life cycles."

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