Baseline Assessment of Marine Litter and Microplastic Ingestion by Cold-Water Coral Reef Benthos at the East Mingulay Marine Protected Area (Sea of the Hebrides, Western Scotland)

Abstract

The extent of marine litter and microplastic occurrence across ocean biomes and species remains poorly characterised, particularly in remote deep-water ecosystems. The present study in the East Mingulay Special Area of Conservation (a Marine Protected Area in the Sea of the Hebrides, western Scotland) used historic surveys and benthic samples to obtain baseline levels of anthropogenic debris and microparticle ingestion. Most debris identified in the MPA was fisheries-related. A total of 11% of benthic macrofauna from Mingulay Reef Area 1 and Banana Reef had ingested microplastics, with no statistically significant effect of feeding guild, station, or reef, on ingestion rates. However, the ingestion rate was highest at a station located in a topographic hollow along a gentle sloping area with strong variable ocean currents where fine-scale interactions between bathymetry and hydrography may have helped trap and focus microparticles. Raman spectroscopy of microparticles revealed several types of polymers being ingested, tentatively identified as polypropylene (PP), polyurethane (PU), polystyrene (PS), and polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Besides establishing a baseline assessment of marine litter and microparticles in a deep-water setting, the approach demonstrates the utility of using historic data and specimens collected for other purposes to expand the geographic and ecosystem coverage for larger more regional-scale and even basin-wide assessments such as those needed to inform Good Environmental Status in European waters, as called for by the Marine Strategy Framework Directive.

Microplastics distribution in the Eurasian Arctic is affected by Atlantic waters and Siberian rivers

“…One aspect of the plastic problem are microplastics that are most commonly defined as small plastic particles 1 µm-5 mm in size 4 . Microplastics are of particular environmental concern because they are bioavailable to a wide range of marine organisms and are present in food webs [5][6][7][8] . The Arctic Ocean was considered free of plastic pollution until recently, but in the last years the number of publications reporting microplastics in the Arctic waters, sea ice, sediments and biota have been increasing [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] .…”

Long-term aquaria study suggests species-specific responses of two cold-water corals to macro-and microplastics exposure

“…Madrepora oculata, form a network of calcium carbonate skeletons consisting in branches of multiple corallites built by individual polyps. Macro-and microplastics have been reported in remote deep-sea coral provinces (La Beur et al, 2019) and macroplastic films have been observed to partially obstruct CWC reefs as they can be trapped in the corallite branches (Angiolillo et al, 2015). In short-term experiments (2.5 months), macroplastics were recently shown to impact the growth and prey capture rates, therefore, effecting colony health and survival of L. pertusa (Chapron et al, 2018).…”

Effects of pollution on marine organisms

“…Many studies investigated the concentration of microplastics in wild-caught invertebrates, from bivalves in Oregon (Baechler, Granek, Hunter, & Conn, 2019) and southeastern India (Naidu, 2019), to deep-sea invertebrates in the northeast Atlantic (Courtene- Jones, Quinn, Ewins, Gary, & Narayanaswamy, 2019) and around the world (Jamieson et al, 2019), to coral reefs in the South China Sea (Ding et al, 2019), Australia (Jensen, Motti, Garm, Tonin, & Kroon, 2019), and cold-water corals off the coast of Scotland (La Beur et al, 2019). Wang, Wang, Ru, and Liu (2019) measured the abundance and characteristics of microplastics found in sediments and benthic organisms from the South Yellow Sea, China, and documented 1.7-47.0 particles per gram (ww).…”