Driven by speculation, not by impact – the effects of plastic on fish species

Plastic products have facilitated the daily lives of an exponentially increasing world population for over 70 years, whilst inadvertently creating one of the most topical environmental issues of the 21st Century: the plastic pollution crisis. Since the mid-20th Century, plastic production has expanded continuously to global production levels of over 350 million tons in 2018 (Thompson et al. 2009; Plastics Europe, 2019). Articles surrounding the presence and impacts of plastic pollution on aquatic animals including fish species have become a regular occurrence on media platforms (Kramm et al. 2018) and scientific publications (Henderson & Green, 2020); however, while iconic pictures of individual fish and other taxa with variously attached or ingested plastics might make headlines, they do not of themselves prove impacts, absolute or relative, at population levels.