Right now, somewhere in the open ocean, a raft the size of a small table is drifting with no one steering it. It's called a fish aggregating device, or FAD, and the tuna industry drops thousands of them into the water every year to lure fish to the surface. A new study published in Science Advances tracked where these rafts actually end up, and the answer is unsettling: they've likely drifted through more than half of the world's marine protected areas by total area, with over 6,300 strandings recorded across 174 protected areas in 53 countries and territories.

When a drifting FAD washes onto a reef, its trailing net snags and breaks coral, then breaks down into plastic pollution in the exact places set aside to stay clean. The nets keep "ghost fishing" long after anyone's watching, entangling turtles and sharks. Nearly 500 at-risk species live in the protected areas where these strandings happen, and the cleanup burden usually falls on small island communities who never saw a dollar of profit from the tuna these devices caught.

Andrew breaks down what the study found, why protected areas can't defend against gear that doesn't recognize boundaries, and the one label on a can of tuna that tells you whether you're funding this problem or not. It's a same-day, ten-second habit that pushes back on the exact fishing method behind the damage.

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