Thamasak Yeemin

Introduction Coral reefs are the most biodiverse marine ecosystems, providing invaluable ecological services such as coastal protection, fisheries production, and carbon sequestration (Yeemin et al., 2024; Yuan et al., 2024). However, these vital ecosystems are experiencing unprecedented degradation driven by the synergistic effects of climate change and anthropogenic pollution (Nurdjaman et al., 2023; Zhao et al., 2024).

Introduction The escalating demand for plastics has led to a substantial surge in production, which attained 368 million tons in 2020. Worldwide plastic manufacturing is expected to surpass 1,100 million tons per year by 2050 (Bai et al., 2025).

1 Introduction The Anthropocene is characterised by a global degradation of coral reefs (Pratchett et al., 2014; Hughes et al., 2018). The widespread degradation of coral reefs is due to local-scale stressors such as water pollution, habitat degradation, invasive species domination and overfishing (Wilkinson, 2000; Carpenter et al., 2008) and global scale stressors resulting from climate change (Hoegh-Guldberg et al., 2007).