Microplastic and charred microplastic in the Faafu Atoll, Maldives

Saliu, Francesco; Montano, Simone; Garavaglia, Maria Grazia; Lasagni, Marina; Seveso, Davide; Galli, Paolo

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2018.09.023

Cited by 120 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 53 publications

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“…Sodium chloride (NaCl) solutions are the most used (Galgani et al 2013). Other density separation methods can be applied to obtain a denser solution and to float even the densest MPs, and they involve the use of zinc chloride (ZnCl 2 ) (Syakti et al 2018), sodium iodide (NaI) solution (Saliu et al 2018), or surfactants such as sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS) (Lenz et al 2015).…”

Section: Density Separationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastics in seawater: sampling strategies, laboratory methodologies, and identification techniques applied to port environment

Cutroneo

Reboa

Besio

et al. 2020

Environ Sci Pollut Res

125

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The European Interreg Italy-France 2014-2020 Maritime Project SPlasH! (Stop to Plastics in H 2 O!) focused on the study of microplastics (MPs) in the marine port environment to evaluate their presence, abundance, and mechanisms of diffusion to the open sea. In the framework of this project, a worldwide review of 74 studies was carried out, providing an overview of MP investigation techniques, focusing on sampling strategies, laboratory methodologies, and identification of MPs collected in seawater, and specifically evaluating their applicability to the marine port environment. Nets were the most commonly used device for MP surface sampling, but their use can be difficult in narrow spaces within the port basins, and they must be coupled to discrete sampling devices to cover all port basins. In the laboratory, density separation (NaCl, ZnCl 2 , NaI, sodium lauryl sulfate (SLS)), filtration (polycarbonate, polyamide, glass, cellulose, ANOPORE inorganic membrane filters), sieving, visual sorting, and digestion methods (acidic, enzymatic, alkaline, oxidative) were used to separate MPs from seawater. Digestion becomes essential with water samples with great inorganic and organic loads as deriving from a port. Although many studies are based only on visual MP identification under a microscope, analytical identification techniques unequivocally determine the particle nature and the identity of the plastic polymers and are necessary to validate the visual sorting of MPs. Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) is the most used analytical identification technique.

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Section: Density Separationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Microplastics in seawater: sampling strategies, laboratory methodologies, and identification techniques applied to port environment

Cutroneo

Reboa

Besio

et al. 2020

Environ Sci Pollut Res

125

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“…However, long-term exposure experiments investigating the effects of plastic ingestion and adhesion on D. scruposa are needed to demonstrate the impact of plastic pollution on the reef, followed by confirmation in the field of the actual loads of plastic to which the species could be exposed. Indeed, since mushroom corals inhabit the inner reef, which may be an accumulation zone for plastic litter (Saliu et al, 2018), they are potentially subjected to high loads of microplastics. In addition, mushroom corals are mobile and tend to move toward shallower waters, where floating plastic abounds.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition, mushroom corals are mobile and tend to move toward shallower waters, where floating plastic abounds. Moreover, in these shallow waters, they are also exposed both to plastics in the surface waters and plastics sequestered in sediments, which are highly abundant at Magodhoo Island (Saliu et al, 2018). Plastics in surface sediments may be trapped by the polyp tissue, generally used for locomotion (Hoeksema and Bongaerts, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These reefs are affected by a number of natural and anthropogenic threats, such as bleaching, algal overgrowth, and coral and invertebrate disease outbreaks (Montano et al, 2012;Saponari et al, 2018), along with pollution and physical impacts derived from human activities, such as coral mining, pollution, land reclamation, tourism and fishing (Jaleel, 2013;Fallati et al, 2017). The amount of microplastics polluting these reefs is staggering: 4.2 ± 1.2 microplastic L −1 were measured in the surface waters of the Indian Ocean (Barrows et al, 2018), whereas 0.32 ± 0.15 particles m −3 and 22.8 ± 10.5 particles m −2 were, respectively, counted in the surface waters and in the beach sediments at Magoodhoo island in the Faafu Atoll in the Maldives (Saliu et al, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Passive and Active Removal of Marine Microplastics by a Mushroom Coral (Danafungia scruposa)

et al. 2020

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Although millions of tons of plastics end up in oceans each year, floating plastics account for only about 1% of all plastic inputs in the ocean. Particularly, microplastics below 1 mm in length, are missing in surface waters due to removal processes like ingestion by marine animals, biofouling, and sinking. Here, we studied how a species of mushroom corals (Danafungia scruposa), common in the Maldives, contributed to the removal of microplastics from the water suspension through active (ingestion) and passive (adhesion to the surface) mechanisms. We evaluated if removal rates were affected by the presence of the coral natural prey (i.e., Artemia salina) and by biofouling on the surface of the microplastic. We found that the coral quickly interacts both actively and passively with microplastics and that the probability for the coral to ingest and retain microplastics was higher when the surface of the microplastic was biofouled. We also found that passive adhesion of microplastics was the primary mechanism through which corals sequester microplastics from the water column.

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“…Especially plastic objects left on the beach for months/years are subject to photodegradation at a higher rate than expected if they were at sea [8,9]. Rapidly fragmented, reduced to meso-plastics (5 mm-2.5 cm) and micro-plastics (MPs, ≤ 5 mm long), they mix with the substrate and can produce a stream of particles flowing into the sea [10][11][12] adding to those directly released by rivers, which are key agents in the release of macro and micro marine litter in oceans [13,14]. There is an urgent need to develop new methods of spatial and temporal mapping of beaches to identify the areas of greatest accumulation, quantify the abundance and types of material, and trace their origin, in line with the protocol and standard monitoring strategies [15][16][17][18][19].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Debris Survey in Coastal Areas: Long-Term Monitoring Programme to Study Spatial and Temporal Accumulation of the Dynamics of Beached Marine Litter

et al. 2020

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Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming increasingly accessible tools with widespread use as environmental monitoring systems. They can be used for anthropogenic marine debris survey, a recently growing research field. In fact, while the increasing efforts for offshore investigations lead to a considerable collection of data on this type of pollution in the open sea, there is still little knowledge of the materials deposited along the coasts and the mechanism that leads to their accumulation pattern. UAVs can be effective in bridging this gap by increasing the amount of data acquired to study coastal deposits, while also limiting the anthropogenic impact in protected areas. In this study, UAVs have been used to acquire geo-referenced RGB images in a selected zone of a protected marine area (the Migliarino, Massacciuccoli, and San Rossore park near Pisa, Italy), during a long-term (ten months) monitoring programme. A post processing system based on visual interpretation of the images allows the localization and identification of the anthropogenic marine debris within the scanned area, and the estimation of their spatial and temporal distribution in different zones of the beach. These results provide an opportunity to investigate the dynamics of accumulation over time, suggesting that our approach might be appropriate for monitoring and collecting such data in isolated, and especially in protected, areas with significant benefits for different types of stakeholders.

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Microplastic and charred microplastic in the Faafu Atoll, Maldives

Cited by 120 publications

References 53 publications

Microplastics in seawater: sampling strategies, laboratory methodologies, and identification techniques applied to port environment

Microplastics in seawater: sampling strategies, laboratory methodologies, and identification techniques applied to port environment

Passive and Active Removal of Marine Microplastics by a Mushroom Coral (Danafungia scruposa)

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Debris Survey in Coastal Areas: Long-Term Monitoring Programme to Study Spatial and Temporal Accumulation of the Dynamics of Beached Marine Litter

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