Occurrence, Composition, and Relationships in Marine Plastic Debris on the First Long Beach Adjacent to the Land-Based Source, South China Sea

Peng Zhang,Shan-Shan Wei,Yu-Qin Yang,Ming-Yue Wang,Ji-Biao Zhang,Zhou Ou

doi:10.3390/jmse8090666

Peng Zhang, Shan-Shan Wei + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse8090666

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Abstract

Land-based sources are the key sources of plastic debris, and mismanaged plastic debris can eventually enter the ocean via marine beaches. In this study, the spatial distribution and amount of plastic debris in the land-based source input zone of First Long Beach (FLB), China, which is a major tourist attraction, were first investigated. By using field investigation, sand samples were collected from two sections on FLB adjacent to land-based sources in December 2019, and the plastic debris in the sand samples was quantified and characterized in the laboratory. The amount of plastic debris ranged from 2 to 82 particles/m2 on this marine sand beach. There was a significant difference in plastic debris amount between the transects along the land-based source input zone (p < 0.05) due to the impacts of wind, ocean currents, and waves. The most abundant size of plastics was 0.5–2.5 cm (44.4%). Moreover, the most common color was white (60.9%). The most abundant shape of plastic debris fell into the fragment category (76.2%). The plastic debris amounts were significantly correlated with multiple sizes. Our results show that land-based wastewater discharge is a large plastic debris source on FLB under coastal water tide variation. Reduction strategies should be carried out by tracing the various land-based sources of plastic debris.

Highlights

With the development of society and the economy, the rapidly increasing demand and production of plastic debris has become a global environmental issue [1,2,3,4,5]
The objectives of this research were (1) to investigate the spatial distribution of plastics debris, (2) to determine the characteristics of plastic debris along the land-based source wastewater discharge outlets on the two First Long Beach (FLB) transects, (3) to analyze the associations among plastic debris amount, sand grain size fraction, and organic matter (OM), and (4) to determine whether a reasonable correlation exists between microplastic debris and more investigated larger plastic debris along the land-based source wastewater discharge outlets on FLB
The land-based wastewater discharge impacts on plastic debris on the beaches along the coast of the FLB were investigated for the first time

Summary

Introduction

With the development of society and the economy, the rapidly increasing demand and production of plastic debris has become a global environmental issue [1,2,3,4,5]. When plastic debris enters marine environments, it can influence water quality and become a threat to marine biology [14,15,16]. Plastic debris and its fragments have several negative impacts on the environment. The European MSFD technical subgroup on Marine Litter [21] proposed a unified, size-based nomenclature of macro- (>2.5 cm), meso- (0.5–2.5 cm), and microplastic (1 μm–5 mm). Because plastic debris is resistant to decomposition in coastal water, it can have serious impacts on the marine environment [1,8,19,25]

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