The imprint of microfibres in southern European deep seas

Abstract

Pollution of the marine environment by large and microscopic plastic fragments and their potential impacts on organisms has stimulated considerable research interest and has received widespread publicity. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the fate and effects of microplastic particles that are fibrous in shape, also referred as microfibres, which are mostly shed from synthetic textiles during production or washing. Here we assess composition and abundance of microfibres in seafloor sediments in southern European seas, filling gaps in the limited understanding of the long-range transport and magnitude of this type of microplastic pollution. We report abundances of 10–70 microfibres in 50 ml of sediment, including both natural and regenerated cellulose, and synthetic plastic (polyester, acrylic, polyamide, polyethylene, and polypropylene) fibres. Following a shelf-slope-deep basin continuum approach, based on the relative abundance of fibres it would appear that coastal seas retain around 33% of the sea floor microfibres, but greater quantities of the fibres are exported to the open sea, where they accumulate in sediments. Submarine canyons act as preferential conduits for downslope transport of microfibres, with 29% of the seafloor microfibres compared to 18% found on the open slope. Around 20% of the microfibres found had accumulated in the deep open sea beyond 2000m of water depth. The remoteness of the deep sea does not prevent the accumulation of microfibres, being available to become integrated into deep sea organisms.

A closer look at anthropogenic fiber ingestion in Aristeus antennatus in the NW Mediterranean Sea: Differences among years and locations and impact on health condition

“…In a recent review, Gago et al (2018) suggested that fibers are more abundant than other shapes in seawater and sediments. Though this statement should be treated with caution as values obtained through very different methodologies were compared, fiber predominance is supported in our study area as separately reported for sediments (Sanchez-Vidal et al, 2018) and several pelagic and demersal fish species (Bellas et al, 2016;Compa et al, 2018;Nadal et al, 2016).…”

“…The great industrial activity and highly developed tourism, together with important fisheries and densely populated coastal segments might account for a great input of marine litter (Eriksen et al, 2014;Ramirez-Llodra et al, 2013). In the NW Mediterranean area, microplastic presence has been reported in surface waters (de Haan et al, 2019;Ruiz-Orejón et al, 2016;Schmidt et al, 2018), beaches (Constant et al, 2019), sediments (Sanchez-Vidal et al, 2018;Woodall et al, 2014) and several organisms, mainly coastal fish (Alomar and Deudero, 2017;Bellas et al, 2016;Collignon et al, 2012;Compa et al, 2018) but also in the deep-sea shrimp Aristeus antennatus (Carreras-Colom et al, 2018). In the latter, microplastic fibers might be retained for longer times compared to other organisms due to the presence of the gastric mill, a common food-grinding structure in decapods, which could hinder passage to the intestine (Watts et al, 2015;Cowie, 2016a, 2016b).…”

Dispersion, Accumulation, and the Ultimate Fate of Microplastics in Deep-Marine Environments: A Review and Future Directions

“…The duration of sediment storage in the onshore realm generally depends on the relief of the margin, which is related to the tectonic regime. Steep, tectonically active margins tend to have minimal onshore storage (e.g., Romans et al, 2016), and hence sediment and microplastics have a short residence time onshore; the opposite being true for mature, passive margins Woodall et al, 2014;Fischer et al, 2015;Bergmann et al, 2017;Graca et al, 2017;Leslie et al, 2017;Martin et al, 2017;Peng et al, 2018;Sanchez-Vidal et al, 2018;Kanhai et al, 2019). As a comparison data from marine litter distributions collected by Pham et al (2014) are shown.…”

Polyester-derived microfibre impacts on the soil-dwelling earthworm Lumbricus terrestris

“…The potential environmental impacts of man-made plastic-derived microfibers (MFs) as a distinct component of MP pollution are increasingly of concern (De Falco et al, 2018;Henry et al, 2019;Sanchez-Vidal et al, 2018). It is estimated that every year, 0.19 million tonnes of synthetic MFs enter marine systems in discharge from wastewater treatment plants.…”

“…Although MF exposure has been observed in aquatic organisms (e.g. Mason et al, 2016;Sanchez-Vidal et al, 2018), and MFs have been detected in agricultural soils (Habib et al, 1998;Zubris and Richards, 2005;Zhang and Liu 2018;Zhang et al, 2019;Corradini et al, 2019), to date, investigation into MF effects on soil fauna and the potential MF-related ecotoxicological impacts is limited: for example, Song et al, (2019) exposed the land snail (Achatina fulica) to polyethylene terephthalate (PET) MFs and reported that MFs had adverse effects on feeding and fitness of the snails.…”