Plastic rocks discovered on a remote Brazilian island

Trindade Island is far from anywhere: a three-day boat trip off the coast of Brazil.

So geologist Fernanda Santos was startled to find a sign of human impact on the island: "rocks" formed from plastic pollution floating in the ocean.

She was working near a nature reserve called Turtle Beach, when she came across a large outcrop of strange-looking blue-green rocks. Intrigued, she took some back to her lab to examine them. She identified them as a new kind of rock with a new ingredient: plastic trash.

Doing more research, she found similar rocklike plastic had also been found in places including Hawaii, Britain, Italy and Japan. The main ingredient in the rocks she found was old fishing nets.