Another potential removal method involves mussels. Researchers from Plymouth Marine Laboratory found that a particular species of mussels, when fed with microplastics along with algae, can turn microplastics into feces pellets that float to water surface and are easy to collect. In one experiment, 300 mussels filtered about 250,000 microplastic particles in an hour. Extra steps, e.g. using watercrafts, would still be needed to collect the feces pellets, although the technique was claimed to be potentially applicable also to wastewater treatment plants, etc.