The waste plastic that is thrown into the ocean off the shores of Australia is literally suffocating the natural coral reefs around the island continent. The Asia Pacific coral reefs are said to be inundated with a staggering figure of 11 billion plastic objects. Most of these plastic objects tend to have disease causing bacteria within.

Research has reveled that reefs with plastic waste are twenty times more likely to have diseased corals growing within them. Joleah Lamb, a marine biologist at Cornell University, says that plastic has pits and pores making it the perfect vessel for microbes to colonize. As these microbes get transferred from the plastic to the coral reef, they can cause a lot of damage.

Lamb’s team has been studying coral reefs since 2011 and has been to the underwater location of 159 reefs since that time. They have covered the areas from Thailand, to Indonesia and further out to Australia. There findings have shown that the more plastic that is found around a coral reef, the more likely it is to find diseased coral reefs.

The team projects that by 2025 there will be 40% increase in the amount of plastic found in the coral reefs around the world. This will lead to a major portion of reefs dying, which will then throw the ocean’s ecosystem out of sync. This is an alarming science project prediction.