The Padang Beach Tourism Area is a popular destination in Padang City making it susceptible to contamination by microplastics. From April to June 2023, we sampled seawater and sediment for microplastics from eight stations having varying degrees of human influence, including densely populated areas, river estuaries, tourist areas, and sparsely populated areas. We analyzed the samples to determine abundance, shape, size, color, and composition. Five shapes (fibers, films, fragments, granules, and pellets), seven colors (black, blue, brown, red, transparent, green, and white), and eight compositons (polycarbonate, polypropylene, polyethylene, polysulfone, polyvinyl chloride, polyethylene terephthalate, polystyrene, and polytetrafluoroethylene) were identified and categorized into five size ranges (1-100 µm, 100-300 µm, 300-500 µm, 500-1000 µm, and 1-5 mm). Microplastics abundance in seawater was not significantly different across stations, ranging from 0.064 to 0.229 particles/m3. Microplastic abundance in sediment, was also not significantly different across stations, ranging from 0.151 to 0.387 particles/kg. However, there was a significant difference between the abundance of microplastics in seawater and sediment. The highest abundance of microplastics was in the form of fragments, and there was significant difference from fiber, fragment, pellet, and granule types. In contrast, thre was a significant difference between the abundance of film-type microplastics in seawater and sediment. Overall, microplastic abundance was similar across densely populated areas, river estuaries, and tourist areas and higher than in sparsely populated areas.
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