Abstract
Plastic waste dumped in the marine environment has severe ecological, social and economic impacts. In recent years, a series of scientific studies documented the contamination by macroplastic and its impact on marine organisms through the accidental ingestion of microplastics, which also originate from the degradation of macroplastic. However, the relationship between the spatial distribution of marine litter and the ingestion of plastics by organisms have never been related. In this work, we aimed to investigate, through a modeling approach, the relations between potential sources of microplastic particles (i.e., seafloor macroplastic accumulation hotspots detected by means of trawl surveys), and the ingestion by the benthic crustacean Norwegian lobster (Nephrops norvegicus). According to the literature, N. norvegicus is characterized by a sedentary behavior and therefore it has been highlighted as a proficient sentinel species for local microplastic contamination. Despite no significant relation has been found between microplastic ingestion and the local presence of seafloor macroplastic, it seems that proximity to hotspots of macroplastic accumulation is significantly related to microplastics ingestion. These results highlight important considerations on the fate of plastic in the marine environments with significant impacts on biota and the quality of the product caught at sea.
Highlights
Every year, large quantities of waste enter the ocean, with plastic alone accounting for ca. 8 million tons of the total material (Jambeck et al, 2015)
Data on seafloor macroplastic litter were collected in the framework of the MEDiterranean International Trawl Survey (MEDITS) campaign (Bertrand et al, 2002), which is based on a stratified random design with a number of hauls that is proportional to bathymetric strata extension (i.e., 10–50, 51– 100, 101–200, 201–500, and 501–800 m)
Total number of items was computed for each category and, for the purpose of this work, we only considered information related to the “plastic” category (i.e., L1 category according to the MEDITS nomenclature)
Summary
Large quantities of waste enter the ocean, with plastic alone accounting for ca. 8 million tons of the total material (Jambeck et al, 2015). MaP undergoes environmental and mechanical deterioration/fragmentation into MiP (Frias and Nash, 2019), these last ones have been accumulating in oceans worldwide over the last decades (Avio et al, 2017) and scientific studies have documented how accidental ingestion of MiP by marine organisms occurs (Wright et al, 2013) Due to their small size, MiP are potentially available for ingestion to a wide range of marine species (Jâms et al, 2020), including cetaceans (Lusher et al, 2018), seabirds (Amélineau et al, 2016), mollusks (Ward et al, 2019), echinoderms (Graham and Thompson, 2009), zooplankton (Cole et al, 2013; Desforges et al, 2015), and corals (Hall et al, 2015). Plastic particles may have toxic impacts due to monomers and plastic additives that do affect endocrine functions (Oehlmann et al, 2009; Talsness et al, 2009), reduce feeding behavior (Cole and Galloway, 2015), and compromise growth and reproduction (Lee et al, 2013; Lo and Chan, 2018)
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