Abstract
As the remote Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) becomes increasingly connected to the rest of the world, there is an impetus to monitor the possible impact of this connectivity. The potential for increases in localised sources of plastic pollution resulting from the increasing navigability of the remote north has yet to be explored. Here we investigate microplastic samples which were collected aboard the Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Amundsen in the summer of 2018 using the underway pump and a filtration system with Fourier transform infrared analysis. We investigate the character, abundance, and distribution of microplastic particles and fibres in the sub-surface waters across the Canadian Arctic and add to the limited dataset on plastic pollution in this region. We find that there are low concentrations of microplastics ranging from 0 to 0.282 n L–1 (average 0.031 ± 0.017 n L–1), comprising 71% polyester and acrylics. We investigate the size distribution of retained particles and fibres on three different filter mesh sizes connected to the underway pump (300, 100, and 50 μm) and find that a 300 μm mesh and a 100 μm mesh retain only 6 and 56%, respectively, of the total particles and fibres. We explore the role of shipping as a potential source of textile fibres and we suggest that future monitoring of plastics in the Canadian Arctic should use the current shipping fleet to monitor its own plastic footprint, utilising the underway pump and mesh sizes < 100 μm.
Highlights
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) connects the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, transporting waters eastwards from the Beaufort Sea toward Baffin Bay
We found the highest concentration of microplastics in the Baffin Bay region (0.405 n L−1), this was dominated by the concentration on transect 11 (0.282 n L−1)
Enabling the use of finer meshes by pre-filtering larger particles is beneficial in the CAA where microplastics < 100 μm predominate and where possible automated analysis would be preferential (Peeken et al, 2018; Rist et al, 2020). This equates to 3.8–84.5 billion plastic fibres released into the Here we provide one of the first assessments of near-surface Canadian Arctic based on 2016 shipping traffic alone
Summary
The Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) connects the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, transporting waters eastwards from the Beaufort Sea toward Baffin Bay. The most bioavailable forms of plastic pollution are those comparable in size to food fed on by organisms at the base of the marine food chain (Cole et al, 2013; Law and Thompson, 2014). These so-called microplastics, here defined as those plastic particles and fibres sized between 1 and 5,000 μm (Thompson et al, 2004) have been found ubiquitously in the world’s oceans (Cózar et al, 2014), with the potential to threaten marine ecosystems (Galloway et al, 2017)
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