Plastic debris so colonised by a bacterial community as to be almost entirely covered by biofil

Plastic debris so colonised by a bacterial community as to be almost entirely covered by biofilm. Microplastic observed by scanning electron microscopy. The image is colourised. This plastic was collected in May 2014 during the 7th Continent expedition to the North Atlantic ocean gyre, where a vast mass of floating plastic waste has accumulated. The biofilm here is a bacterial community which has developed on plastic debris floating in the sea; this debris has been called the plastisphere. Some of these micro-organisms may be pathogenic.