Abundance and Characteristics of Microplastics in Seawater and Corals From Reef Region of Sanya Bay, China

Xinming Lei,Guowei Zhou,Hao Cheng,Yuyang Zhang,Youfang Sun,Hui Huang,Lei Jiang,Yong Luo

doi:10.3389/fmars.2021.728745

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) contamination is widespread in the coral reef ecosystems leading to the exposure of both corals and other biotas. Knowledge gaps still exist concerning patterns in MPs abundance spatially. This work quantified the MPs abundance and characteristics in the seawater and corals in the Sanya Bay, Hainan Island. MPs abundance was detected in the seawater and coral samples ranging from 15.50 to 22.14 items L–1, and 0.01 to 3.60 items polyp–1, respectively. We found the predominant size and type of MPs in seawater and corals were smaller than 2 mm and fiber. Further analysis revealed that the characteristics of MPs in the corals were significantly different from those in the seawater environment, indicating that the MPs are selectively enriched in corals. Furthermore, the MPs particles ingested and retained in coral tissue may be related to the polyp size. This study shows that MPs are present in the whole coral reef region and the coral community structure would be potentially harmed by these contaminants.

Highlights

MPs were detected in all the seawater and coral samples from the four coral reef stations in the Sanya Bay of Hainan Island (Figures 2A–D)
The results provided evidence that the coral reef region in Sanya Bay is extensively affected by MPs pollution, which indicates that reef organisms in surrounding seawater are suffering extensively from MPs
The results showed widespread MPs contamination in the coral reef ecosystems in this research region

Summary

Introduction

Plastic debris was first noted as a potential coastal water problem in 1971 (Carpenter et al, 1972), and MPs (plastic fragments < 5 mm, MPs) are a widespread form of contamination in marine ecosystems (Moore, 2008; Andrady, 2011), from the Arctic waters (Lusher et al, 2015) to the remote Islands (Ding et al, 2019; Saliu et al, 2019; Tan et al, 2020; Oldenburg et al, 2021) and the coastal waters (Sutton et al, 2016; Yan et al, 2019; Qi et al, 2020; Tsang et al, 2020; Xie et al, 2021). MPs can be ingested by Microplastics in Sanya Bay diverse marine organisms and potentially be transferred through the food web (Setala et al, 2014; Rochman et al, 2015; Tanaka and Takada, 2016) It is a matter of great concern that the MPs may negatively affect the health of marine organisms (Moore, 2008) by blocking of the intestines (Carpenter et al, 1972), by acting as a vector for diseases (Lamb et al, 2018), and by acting as a carrier for the transport of heavy metals and chemical contaminants (Andrady, 2011; Saliu et al, 2019; Xie et al, 2021). All the research suggested that MPs ingestion might have negative physiological (Reichert et al, 2018; Su et al, 2020; Liao et al, 2021; Tang et al, 2021; Xiao et al, 2021) and ecological (Lamb et al, 2018; Saliu et al, 2019; Soares et al, 2020) consequences for corals

Objectives

Methods

Discussion

Conclusion