Abstract
Abstract. Microplastics (MPs) are a contaminant of growing concern due to their widespread distribution and interactions with marine species, such as filter feeders. To investigate the MPs accumulation in wild and cultured mussels, a dynamic energy budget (DEB) model was developed and validated with the available field data of Mytilus edulis (M. edulis, wild) from the North Sea and Mytilus galloprovincialis (M. galloprovincialis, cultured) from the northern Ionian Sea. Towards a generic DEB model, the site-specific model parameter, half-saturation coefficient (Xk), was applied as a power function of food density for the cultured mussel, while for the wild mussel it was calibrated to a constant value. The DEB-accumulation model simulated the uptake and excretion rate of MPs, taking into account environmental characteristics (temperature and chlorophyll a). An accumulation of MPs equal to 0.53 particles per individual (fresh tissue mass 1.9 g) and 0.91 particles per individual (fresh tissue mass 3.3 g) was simulated for the wild and cultured mussel after 4 and 1 years respectively, in agreement with the field data. The inverse experiments investigating the depuration time of the wild and cultured mussel in a clean-from-MPs environment showed a 90 % removal of MPs load after 2.5 and 12 d respectively. Furthermore, sensitivity tests on model parameters and forcing functions highlighted that besides MPs concentration, the accumulation is highly dependent on temperature and chlorophyll a of the surrounding environment. For this reason, an empirical equation was found, directly relating the environmental concentration of MPs, with the seawater temperature, chlorophyll a, and the mussel's soft tissue MPs load.
Highlights
Microplastic (MP) particles are synthetic organic polymers with size below 5 mm (Arthur et al, 2009) that originate from a variety of sources including the following: those particles that are manufactured for particular household or industrial activities, such as facial scrubs, toothpastes, and resin pellets used in the plastic industry, and those formed from the fragmentation of larger plastic items (GESAMP, 2015)
The growth simulations of M. edulis and M. galloprovincialis for the North Sea and the N Ionian Sea are shown in Figs. 3 and 4 respectively
It has been reported that wild mussels grow considerably slower than farmed mussels (∼ 1.7 times) (Sukhotin and Kulakowski, 1992), and a higher value of Xk promotes less mussel growth, which is the case for the North Sea mussel
Summary
Microplastic (MP) particles are synthetic organic polymers with size below 5 mm (Arthur et al, 2009) that originate from a variety of sources including the following: those particles that are manufactured for particular household or industrial activities, such as facial scrubs, toothpastes, and resin pellets used in the plastic industry (primary MPs), and those formed from the fragmentation of larger plastic items (secondary MPs) (GESAMP, 2015). Eriksen et al (2014) estimated that more than 5 trillion microplastic particles, weighing over 250 000 t, float in the oceans Due to their composition, density, and shape, MPs are highly persistent in the environment and are, accumulating at different rates in different marine compartments: surface and deeper layers in the water column, as well as at the seafloor and within the sediments (Moore et al, 2001; Lattin et al, 2004; Thompson, 2004; Lusher, 2015). Since the majority of MPs entering the marine environment originate from the land (i.e. landfills, littering of beaches and coastal areas, rivers, floodwaters, untreated municipal sewerage, and industrial emissions), the threat of MPs pollution in the coastal zone puts considerable pressure on the coastal ecosystems (Cole et al, 2011; Andrady, 2011).
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