Abstract
The Mediterranean basin is among the most impacted marine ecoregions globally, being at the same time semi-enclosed by densely populated countries and crossed by trafficked maritime routes. Such anthropogenic pressure threatens both the quality of its waters and the high biodiversity living in them, making the role of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) crucial for preserving species suitable habitats. Under the European Union Marine Strategy Framework Directive, marine litter has been recognized as one of the principal causes of marine pollution, and public awareness on its environmental and biological impacts is raising. Using a quantitative and data-driven modelling approach, here we assess the presence of plastic waste within the feeding grounds of the fin whale Balaenoptera physalus, an endangered cetacean for which there is increasing evidence of impacts due to microplastic ingestion. To this end, we analyze a decade (2000 - 2010) of advection patterns of marine plastic litter, modelled with a Lagrangian approach. Particles are released in the MPA Pelagos, the International Sanctuary for the Protection of Mediterranean Marine Mammals (North-Western Mediterranean, between France, Italy and Monaco), from different sources (i.e., untreated waste along coasts, plastic discharged from rivers and plastic pollution released along maritime shipping routes). Risk of exposure of fin whales to microplastic pollution is evaluated by interlacing plastic litter distribution maps obtained through modelling with maps of suitable habitats obtained from the elaboration of satellite chlorophyll-a data in species-specific visited areas. Our modelling results show that all the three main sources of plastic litter taken into account clearly contribute to impacting cetaceans in the Sanctuary, yet in a different manner. The procedure formalized here can be extended to assess the risk caused by plastic pollution in other MPAs as well as to evaluate possible impacts on other taxa, thus informing targeted actions to tackle the complex issue of marine litter.
Highlights
Plastic materials have undisputably revolutionized our daily life, their countless purposes are reflected by their ubiquitous presence as litter in the environment
The Mediterranean Sea is no stranger to the issue of marine litter: some samplings and modeling experiments revealed concentrations similar to those found in the North Atlantic Gyre (Cózar et al, 2015; Suaria et al, 2016)
The indicator we provide is the risk of ingestion of microplastic debris
Summary
Plastic materials have undisputably revolutionized our daily life, their countless purposes are reflected by their ubiquitous presence as litter in the environment. Modeling Plastics Exposure for the Marine Biota (Law et al, 2010; Eriksen et al, 2014; Cózar et al, 2015; Van Sebille et al, 2015) These areas, frequently referred to as garbage patches, are showing increasing litter concentrations (Lebreton et al, 2018) due to the coupling between rising plastic production (PlasticsEurope, 2018) and the input of plastic waste in the world’s oceans (Jambeck et al, 2015). Human activities are causing habitat loss and degradation, overexploitation and harm during fishing activities, disturbance (from underwater noise to collisions between animals and ships) and several kinds of marine pollution: chemical pollution, noise, heat, electromagnetic radiation (Pace et al, 2015) These threats are worsened and amplified by the introduction of alien, invasive species (Zenetos et al, 2012; Micheli et al, 2013; Galil et al, 2018) and by the impacts of climate change (Lejeusne et al, 2010). At least 134 species living in the Mediterranean Sea have already been found to be affected by floating or seafloor litter, including some species of commercial value (Deudero and Alomar, 2015) and other endangered ones, like some cetaceans (IUCN, 2012)
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