Billions of bits of plastic waste are entangled in corals and sickening reefs from Thailand to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, scientists said on Thursday.
The trash is another pressure on corals, already suffering from overfishing, rising temperatures caused by climate change and other pollution.
In the Asia-Pacific region a total of 11.1 billion plastic items — including shopping bags, fishing nets, even diapers and tea-bags — are ensnared on reefs, the scientists wrote in the journal Science.