We use cookies to improve your experience, some are essential for the operation of this site.

Piece of plastic magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope.

Piece of plastic magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope.
Piece of plastic magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope.
Piece of plastic magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope.
Piece of plastic magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope.
Comments (0)
294480
Mincer, Tracy
Piece of plastic magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope.
Still Image
03/29/2017
bag08_C.jpg
Image Of the Day caption:
You're looking at a close-up of a remnant of a plastic trash bag collected from the Atlantic Oceanmagnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope. Tracy Mincer, a biogeochemist at WHOI, zoomed in even further and found microorganisms (colorized in blue) nestled in nooks and crannies on the surfaceliving on and hithching a ride on this teensy bit of plastic floating in the ocean. Patches of stringy-looking substances secreted by organisms festoon the plastic like party streamers. Mincer and colleagues dubbed this newly emerging ecological habitat the plastispherea diverse multitude of microbes colonizing and thriving on flecks of plastic that pollute the oceans.
Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 48, No. 2, pg. 22, this image is 1 of 3 used with this caption:
This is a close-up of a remnant of a plastic trash bag collected from the Atlantic. Tracy Mincer, a biogeochemist at WHOI, zoomed in even further and found curious things happening on the surface of this plastic particle. Magnified 10,000 times by a scanning electron microscope, this teensy bit of plastic that was floating in the ocean reveals organisms (colorized in blue) nestled in surface nooks and crannies. Patches of stringy-looking substances secreted by organisms festoon the plastic like party streamers.
Photo by Tracy Mincer
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
Labels
This item includes these files
Image
Image
Collections