4. Plastic Bottles and Caps
Plastic bottles and their colorful caps are some of the most recognizable items found during ocean surveys.
While bottles may start out whole, they gradually break into smaller fragments—never truly disappearing.
Each stage of fragmentation puts marine wildlife at risk, from ingestion by birds to entanglement by fish.
These seemingly harmless objects are now almost everywhere in our oceans.
For more information, see this Ocean Conservancy article.