Plastics in sea surface waters around the Antarctic Peninsula

Abstract

Although marine plastic pollution has been the focus of several studies, there are still many gaps in our understanding of the concentrations, characteristics and impacts of plastics in the oceans. This study aimed to quantify and characterize plastic debris in oceanic surface waters of the Antarctic Peninsula. Sampling was done through surface trawls, and mean debris concentration was estimated at 1,794 items.km −2 with an average weight of 27.8 g.km −2 . No statistical difference was found between the amount of mesoplastics (46%) and microplastics (54%). We found hard and flexible fragments, spheres and lines, in nine colors, composed mostly of polyurethane, polyamide, and polyethylene. An oceanographic dispersal model showed that, for at least seven years, sampled plastics likely did not originate from latitudes lower than 58°S. Analysis of epiplastic community diversity revealed bacteria, microalgae, and invertebrate groups adhered to debris. Paint fragments were present at all sampling stations and were approximately 30 times more abundant than plastics. Although paint particles were not included in plastic concentration estimates, we highlight that they could have similar impacts as marine plastics. We call for urgent action to avoid and mitigate plastic and paint fragment inputs to the Southern Ocean.

Diverse groups of fungi are associated with plastics in the surface waters of the Western South Atlantic and the Antarctic Peninsula

“…We found a total of 449 pieces of plastic (371 from WSA and 78 from the AP (Lacerda et al., 2019), and from that total, 58 plastics were randomly chosen for metabarcoding analysis, of which 32 were from WSA and 26 from AP. These comprised 25 microplastics (17 plastics in WSA and eight plastics from AP, size range 1–5 mm) and 33 mesoplastic (15 plastics in WSA and 18 plastics from AP, size range 5–74 mm).…”

“…OTUs within Chytridiomycota, Rozellomycota, Aphelidomycota, Cryptomycota which have been shown to be parasites of several algal groups (Gerphagnon, Colombet, Latour, & Sime‐Ngando, 2017; Kagami, De Bruin, Ibelings, & Van Donk, 2007) including diatoms, were also detected. A number of OTUs were found matching undescribed Aphelidiomycota and Rozellomycota taxa (see Figure ), which are parasites of a range of organisms (Karpov et al., 2014; Letcher & Powell, 2019) and could be parasitizing the dense microalgal biofilms on the surface of plastics (Lacerda et al., 2019; Oberbeckmann et al., 2016). Phylogenies also revealed taxa with affinities within the expanded clade of microsporidia, these obligate parasites (Bass et al., 2018) are likely to be parasitizing protists and metazoans within the biofilms.…”

“…Several fungal taxa from marine and terrestrial environments are able to degrade plastic polymers (Paço et al., 2017; Russell et al., 2011) and we know that although community composition is highly variable, fungi are early colonisers of plastics, meaning they are potentially important in biofilm formation (De Tender et al., 2017). Moreover, marine plastics are often covered in polysaccharide‐rich diatom biofilms (Lacerda et al., 2019), this could explain the attachment and association of fungi with biofilms on plastics (Kettner, Rojas‐Jimenez, Oberbeckmann, Labrenz, & Grossart, 2017; Oberbeckmann, Osborn, & Duhaime, 2016). Recent studies have directly linked fungi to the degradation of organic matter (Cunliffe, Hollingsworth, Bain, Sharma, & Taylor, 2017;Ortega‐Arbulú, Pichler, Vuillemin, & Orsi, 2019), and in the open ocean fungi may attach to marine snow particles (Bochdansky, Clouse, & Herndl, 2017; Duret, Lampitt, & Lam, 2020).…”

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris

“…Mesoscale and submesoscale eddy turbulence is often represented as a random walk in Lagrangian particle modelling (e.g. Haza et al 2012, Maximenko et al 2018, Lacerda et al 2019, where the turbulent diffusion coefficient has been assumed constant. However, this uniform turbulent diffusion will not be able to capture mixing in areas with varying eddy activity.…”

On Thermal Infrared Remote Sensing of Plastic Pollution in Natural Waters

“…The highest levels appeared in the Southern Ocean (Figure 1). Even though it is very remote, Lacerda et al [22] found plastic pollution in surface waters near the Antarctic Peninsula. Around here, in the Palmer Basin (65 • W, 65 • S), SST/t2m was −1.0/−2.9 ± 0.1 • C. Numerous research stations are based on the Antarctic Peninsula and the nearby islands.…”