Size-Selective Feeding by Mesopelagic Fish Can Impact Ocean Surface Abundance of Small Plastic Particles

Over 5.25 trillion particles of plastic have spread throughout the worlds’ oceans. The size frequency distribution of plastic particles is thought to be basically uniform across the major oceans. However little is presently known of the plastics finding their way into the remote Southern Ocean. We gathered information on the size frequencies of plastic debris in the range 2–10 mm by surveying a beach and collecting scats from fur seals, a known fish predator, at Sub-Antarctic Macquarie Island. The results show differences in the frequency distributions between the two sampling platforms. Accidental ingestion of plastic particles by Myctophid fish might be a sink for small plastic particles.