Plastics outnumber baby fish 7-to-1 in some coastal nurseries

Calm ocean surface nurseries shelter thousands of baby fish. They also attract bits of plastic

filefish

A net dragged through an ocean slick off Hawaii Island caught this scribbled filefish, about 50 days old and five centimeters long, and all sorts of plastics.

David Liittschwager

Plastics can enter the food web at an unexpected point: larval fish as small as the tip of a pencil.