Overt consumption adds up to trouble for our Great Barrier Reef

Overt consumption is a root cause of climate change and within that over consumption is our perverse use of and addiction to plastics of all sorts.

And now, as The New York Times (NYT) reports, our coral reefs appear to have included plastic in their diet.

In a story headed: “Fears over plastic-eating coral in Australia's Barrier Reef” the NYT tells us that Australian researchers have fears about the impact the indigestible fragments have on coral health and that of other marine life.

The scientists found that when they placed corals from the reef into plastic-contaminated water, the marine life "ate plastic at rates only slightly lower than their normal rate of feeding on marine plankton", the study published in the journal Marine Biology said.