Microplastic (and plastic in general) is one of the largest contributors to debris found in both our oceans and Great Lakes. It is usually less than five millimeters in length (or about the size of a sesame seed) and hazardous to all kinds of marine life.

So what exactly are microplastics?

They come from a variety of sources, including from larger plastic debris that degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. Also, microbeads, a type of microplastic, are very tiny pieces of manufactured polyethylene plastic that are added as exfoliants to health and beauty products, such as some cleansers and toothpaste. They can easily pass through filtration systems, eventually ending up in the ocean (or lakes) and be mistaken for food by all sorts of wildlife.

Until recently, microplastics (as well as normal plastic) have been hard to clean out (whether by hand or through a system), but some scientists from the American Chemical Society have done some research and concluded that superworms, beetle larvae that are commonly sold at pet stores as food for reptiles and fish, can eat about eight times more than some of the other known plastic-ingesting insects like mealworms.

In an experiment, the research team found that after 21 days, the superworms had consumed about 7o percent of the two grams of polystyrene they started with. In this specific worm, the key digestion component comes from a specific strain of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacteria that lives in the gut of that beetle larvae, and an enzyme that that bacteria creates, called erine hydrolase.

This means that, while at first, there is something that could potentially get rid of many bad plastics (also considering that not all of them are recyclable), it could also develop into something where the part that makes the worms not necessarily needed by isolating the part that does it.

"If it is successful, then this enzyme-mediated plastic biodegradation not only could be demonstrated in the laboratory, but also could be applied as a real bio-technique to remove plastics, especially microplastics in nature," says Dae-Hwan Kim,, a researcher at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology, where the project took place.

It may not be much, but its a start for steps towards a direction in helping remove Plastics from the ocean.

But what makes these little microplastics (and plastic in general) the absolute worse? Besides the fact that we, as a species, keep making more? It's the harmful effects they have on aquatic life, I mean we have all seen the picture of dead turtles and other fish that are caught (or wash up on the shore) and then cut into only to see tons of plastic.

A recent study found one of the reasons for this is that plastic, specifically, bags are being eaten by turtles, not only because they look like jellyfish but smell like food.

This is a problem because once a turtle swallows the bag they are unable to throw it back up. As a result, most of the ingested plastic gets stuck in the turtle's gut and limits its ability to absorb and digest food.

The question shouldn't be why are the turtles eating plastic bags? It should be why are humans throwing them away where they carelessly end up in the water for turtles to eat anyways?

We need to do better as a species to protect the ones that can't protect themselves. After all, it's the things that you can't see that are often the most dangerous.