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The organisms that travel in floating objects by the surface of the ocean can be transported until distant areas at which they could not have arrived by other means. This called process rafting (passive transport) is particularly important for those organisms that do not have independent mechanisms of dispersion, and can have important consequences if these organisms, once have arrived at a new habitat, are able to establish new populations, which will depend on the conditions of new means and the capacity of the organism to reproduce and to proliferate in the new habitat.
Most of floating objects that are in the sea are plastic. There are them in great amounts because they remain long periods of time in the surface, they have a very slow degradation and, therefore, cross great distances with the organisms that have been adhered to their surface during the passage.
Phytoplankton dinoflagellate captured in the vicinity of the French city of Toulon. (Photo: J. Sanchez/CRAM)
The frequency of invasions of no native species in marine habitats has increased in the last decades. Although in many cases these invasions are related to the antropogénico transport originated by human activities as the aquiculture or marine transport (mainly through ballast waters), in some cases the non native species can arrive adhered to floating objects.
These campaigns, throughout the route of Vell Marí by the noroccidendal Mediterranean, were developed under the direction of the scientific equipment of the CMIMA-Institut de Ciències of the Sea (CSIC) formed by Mercedes Masó and Esther Garcés and its objective was based on the collection of water plastics of sea opened for the obtaining of data on the use of rafting by seaweed like dispersion mechanism.
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