Underwater seagrass in coastal areas appear to trap plastic pollution in natural bundles of fibre known as “Neptune balls”, researchers have found.

“We show that plastic debris in the seafloor can be trapped in seagrass remains, eventually leaving the marine environment through beaching,” lead author Anna Sanchez-Vidal, a marine biologist at the University of Barcelona, told AFP.

It is unclear if collecting the plastic damages the seagrass itself.

There was plastic debris in half of the loose seagrass leaf samples, up to 600 bits per kilogram of leaves.

In 2018 WWF estimated that in a matter of weeks over the holiday season in the Mediterranean, the rise in plastic marine pollution contributed to around 150m tonnes of plastic in the ocean