(17.Februar) Biologist Gunnar Gerdts became interested in the issue of plastic in fish in 2013 after he heard that sport fishers off the German island of Heligoland were catching mackerel with long, colored synthetic fibers in their stomachs.
Later that year, Gerdts and his colleagues pulled 290 fish from the North and Baltic seas, including mackerel, flounder, herring, cod, and dab. They found that almost a fifth of the mackerel had plastic in their stomachs, compared to just 3.4 percent of flounder, cod, and dab.