Housework Can’t Kill You, But Why Take a Chance?

The Eastern Cleaner Clingfish often busy themselves with cleaning parasites from other larger fishes. Clingfish swims over the surface of larger fishes, picking food off them. They have the sucking disc allowing the fish to adhere to surfaces, which can be very strong. In some species it enables them to lift as much as 300 times the weight of the clingfish. The fish may sometimes confuse plastic for an edible substance because microplastics in the oceans pick up a covering of biological material, such as algae, that mimics the smell of food. Researchers don’t know very much about the effects of ingesting plastic on fish or humans, however, there is evidence that that microplastics and even smaller particles called nanoplastics can move from a fish’s stomach to its muscle tissue, which is the part that bigger fish and eventually humans typically eat.