Deep sea plastic biotas are formed by floating plastics that sank after biofouling.Plastics with nutrition and high biodiversity attract deep sea creatures and act as stepping-stone for biological striding. Plastics are cheap,light,water proof,sturdy and durable,with high insulativity.It is easy to shape and resistant to chemical cor-rosion.Therefore,plastics are widely used in the modern society,representing a major progress in human civilization.Global pro-duction of plastics has increased considerably over the last few decades from 1.7 million metric tons per year in the 1950s to 370 million metric tons per year in 2019[1].As a result,plastic wastes also increase quickly,e.g.,by～10％every year in the last decades.Around 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic wastes were gen-erated between 1950 and 2015[2].Given that its degradation takes hundreds of years,plastic is even proposed as the No.1 envi-ronmental challenge.More than tens of thousands metric tons of plastics are dumped into the ocean every year[3].Fishing thread,microplastics and other plastics are indeed an increasing threat to ocean lives:ingestions and entanglements by the marine life[4].Nevertheless,the impact of such large amount of plastic gar-bage on ocean environment remains to be fully explored.

Xiaohua Li;Weidong Sun

Center of Deep Sea Research,Center of Ocean Mega Science,Institute of Oceanology,Chinese Academy of Sciences,Qingdao 266071,China;Laboratory for Marine Mineral Resources,Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology,Qingdao 266237,China;University of Chinese Academy of Sciences,Beijing 100049,China

科学通报（英文版）

[1]Xiaohua Li;Weidong Sun-.The formation of deep sea plastic biotas)[J].科学通报（英文版）,2022(07):674-675

biotas,striding, Plastics,insulativity,ingestions,bage

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