#plastic debris

[todropscience]

NORTH PACIFIC GYRE NOW WORKS AS A ISLAND, WHERE COASTAL SPECIES CAN THRIVE

Researchers have recently prove that the high seas are colonized by a diverse array of coastal species, which survive and reproduce in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of floating marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean, in the open ocean.

Researchers examined 105 items of floating plastic items collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and identified 484 marine invertebrate organisms on the debris, accounting for 46 different species, of which 37 coastal were invertebrate species from coastal habitats, largely of Western Pacific origin. Most of these coastal species possessed either direct development or asexual reproduction, possibly facilitating long-term persistence on rafts. 

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so huge that the findings suggest plastic pollution in the ocean might be enabling the creation of new floating ecosystems of species that are not normally able to survive in the open ocean. 

These emergent properties of plastic rafts may play an important role in sustaining diverse biofouling communities, but more research is needed to understand how such emergent properties may drive colonization, succession and trophic interactions of coastal and pelagic taxa associated with floating plastics.

Photo above: Floating plastic debris from the  the Eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre showing coastal organism living on. Photos courtesy of The Ocean Cleanup.

Photo below: Graphic  of the debris collection sites, illustrated as diamonds, in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean Subtropical Gyre. Model of the predicted concentration of debris, the more red, the most you could find marine debris.

Reference (Open Access): Haram et al. 2023 Extent and reproduction of coastal species on plastic debris in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Nat Ecol Evol

[sheltiechicago]

the 8th continent by lenka petráková is a floating station concept to clean up our oceans

this ambitious concept by lenka petráková proposes to solve one of the world’s biggest pollution problems: ocean garbage. called the ‘8th continent’, the design collects plastic debris from the water’s surface and breaks it down into recyclable material. the huge floating station imagines a cleaner and sustainable future for marine environments. it was also recently awarded the 2020 grand prix award for architecture and innovation of the sea following a competition launched by foundation jacques rougerie.

[marinelitter]

A teenage diver found tons of golf ball accumulating on the seafloor off Pebble Beach, near Carmel, California, a beach very close a Golf Club.

She, we the helpt of an expert, and volunters, removed 39,602 golf balls from intertidal and nearshore environments near Carmel, California, and combined with concurrent cleanup efforts, they report the retrieval of 50,681 balls, approximately 2.5 tons of debris.

- A harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) swimming near a dense aggregation of golf balls, and a threatened southern sea otter (Enhydra lutris nereis) handles a golf ball.

According to authors of the study, golf ball pollution is likely an underreported problem associated with coastal courses worldwide. Nearshore marine environments in close proximity to golf courses may similarly accumulate debris and should be surveyed to develop context-dependent mitigation strategies. Marine plastic pollution is a diffuse and seemingly intractable global problem, but the identification and remediation of known point sources of pollution is a tangible step in reducing the deleterious impacts of anthropogenic activity on marine systems

Photo:  Several examples of dense aggregations of hundreds of golf balls encountered in the nearshore environment at the Pebble Beach study site.

Reference: Kewer et al., 2019. Quantifying marine debris associated with coastal golf courses Marine Pollution Bulletin. 

[Photo description: dense aggregations of golf balls]

[materialsworld]

Sunlight to clean water from plastic waste

Harnessing the sun’s radiation to help rid the oceans of microplastics contamination is one of several technical innovations to be developed by a new EU-funded project. Beginning in November 2017, a system developed at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden for breaking down microplastics from personal care products will be tested for implementation in homes and wastewater treatment plants.

While exposure to sunlight can degrade plastics into harmless elements, it’s a slow process. In some cases plastics can take several years to decompose. Joydeep Dutta, chair of the Functional Materials department at KTH, said this system will speed up that process by making more efficient use of available visible light and ultraviolet rays from the sun.

The system involves coatings with material of nano-sized semiconductors that initiate and speed up a natural process called photocatalytic oxidation, Dutta said. In a test household, these nano material coated filter systems will be placed at the exit of wastewater from homes. Similarly, in wastewater treatment plants, these devices will be used to initiate microplastics degradation after the classical treatments are completed.

The photocatalytist membranes were created in partnership with the Swedish company, PP Polymer AB.

Photocatalytic oxidation with titanium oxide and zinc oxide semiconductors has been used to convert volatile pollutants, oils and other substances into harmless elements such as water and CO2. Similar in concept to photosynthesis, photocatalysis activates the breakup of compounds by exciting electrons, which then causes water molecules to split into their constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen. The material captures enough solar radiation from a minimum of available light to set off a reaction with the molecules of the plastic. The radicals then exchange electrons with the atoms that comprise plastic molecules, effectively pulling these contaminants apart into harmless compounds of CO2 and water.

‘The semiconductor material is able to excite the molecules and set off this process using the 40 percent of solar radiation that is visible light,’ Dutta said.

Nearly every beach worldwide is reported to be contaminated by microplastics, according to the Norwegian Institute for Water Research. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, marine life ingest these plastics, which also adsorb pollutants such as DDT and PCB.

‘These plastics will start accumulating in the food chain, transferring from species to species, with direct adverse consequences to human population,” Dutta says. “Tackling plastic pollution at its source is the most effective way to reduce marine litter.’

The project, titled Cleaning Litter by Developing and Applying Innovative Methods in European Seas (CLAIM), will also deploy floating booms at river mouths in Europe to collect visible plastic waste; and ferry routes in Denmark, the Gulf of Lyon, Ligurian Sea and Saronikos Gulf will be used to test a plastics measuring system that could be later deployed on shipping vessels.

Source: KTH The Royal Institute of Technology

[todropscience]

PLASTIC DEBRIS IN THE ARCTIC COMES FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD

Plastic debris is ubiquitous in all ecosystems and has even reached locations that humans will hardly reach such as the deep ocean floor and the atmosphere. Researchers has highlighted that plastic debris is now pervasive even in remote Arctic regions. And following a recent published research, one third of the plastic debris which still bore imprints or labels allowing an analysis of their origin came from Europe, and much of that number from Germany. 

The study, which was supported by citizen scientists from 2016 to 2021 collected 23,000 plastic items, weight in total almost 1600 kg. Researchers looked for labels, marks or imprints and found out that most of the plastic came from Arctic countries, but event from distant countries such Brazil, China and the USA. A comparison of the new data with those from previous fieldwork conducted at the sea surface and the deep ocean floor shows that much more debris accumulates on Arctic shorelines. This plastic debris poses additional challenges for Arctic ecosystems, which are already overly burdened by climate change. 

Photo top: Plastic debris washed ashore in the Arctic sorted by country of origin By J. Hagemann.

Photo below: Citizen scientists collecting plastic waste on a Svalbard beach. By Birgit Lutz.

Reference (Open Access): Meye, Bergmann & Lutz. Where does Arctic beach debris come from? Analyzing debris composition and provenance on Svalbard aided by citizen scientists. Frontiers.  

1 of 6

[todropscience]

TINY CRUSTACEANS ARE EATING MICROPLASTICS IN DEEP-SEA ECOSYSTEMS

According to a recent study, microplastic contaminants occur in the very deepest reaches of the oceans. Researchers have detect the presence of ingested microplastics in the hindguts of deep-sea amphipod populations, in six deep ocean trenches from around the Pacific Rim, at depths ranging from 7000 m to 10890 m. The study is published in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

More than 72% of the amphidos examined contained at least one microparticle. Microplastic ingestion has been observed in a wide range of animals, including plankton, bivalves, crustaceans, echinoderms, fishes, elasmobranchs and cetaceans. Plastic pollution is having a detrimental effect on the world's marine organisms, with an estimated 322 million tonnes of plastic produced annually. 

This report is the deepest record of microplastic ingestion, indicating that anthropogenic debris is bioavailable to organisms at some of the deepest locations in the Earth's oceans.

Photo Deep-sea amphipods collected from hadal trenches around the Pacific rim. (a) Hirondellea gigas, (b) Hirondellea dubia and (c) Eurythenes gryllus. Scale bar is10 mm. 

Reference (Open Access): Jamieson et al., 2019 Microplastics and synthetic particles ingested by deep-sea amphipods in six of the deepest marine ecosystems on Earth. R. Soc. open sci

[todropscience]

PRIMITIVE COELACANTH ARE EATING PLASTIC DEBRIS IN INDONESIA

A coelacanth was found dead off the coast of Indonesia with a plastic wrap from Lay’s potato chips inside its guts. The image was originally taken in 2016 by an Indonesian fisherman, but recently was shared by Blue Planet Society on Twitter. This is the first report of marine debris ingestion by coelacanth, and despite this coelacanth was found dead, there is no certainty if the plastic wrap was involved in the decease.

The Indonesian coelacanth (Latimeria menadoensis), one of two living species of coelacanth, is listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. There are around 10,000 mature individuals remain in the wild. Although they have no value as food, they are extremely susceptible to bycatch by deep sea fishermen.

This relationshiop between marine fauna and debris is not a surprise, since China, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam,are spewing out as much as 60 percent of the plastic waste that enters the world’s seas.

Coela­canths were once believed to have gone extinct and were known for a long time only through fossils. In 1938, a living specimen was unexpectedly discovered in deep waters off South Africa. Coelacanth are opportunistic predator, meaning it will eat anything that crosses it's path while it hunts for food, living in deep waters at 150-200 m depth.

Photo  via @Seasaver

[todropscience]

PLASTIC BAG RECORDED AT BOTTOM OF MARIANA TRENCH

The world's deepest plastic bag has been found at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean's Mariana Trench,  at 10,898 m.  Plastics are ubiquitous even at depths under 6000 m, most of them are single-use products. 

The findings comes from over 5,000 separate dives using deep-sea remote vehicles (ROVs). But not only plastic was found, also metal, rubber, fishing gear, glass and various other man-made items. The study showed association of plastic debris with deep-sea biota, which was relatively frequency, 17% of debris images were found with at least one organisms. Researchers found entanglement of plastic bags in the cold seep communities.

According to japaneses researchers who conducted the study, plastic debris, particularly single-use products, has reached the deepest parts of the ocean. Whereas regulation on the production of single-use plastic and the flow of such debris into the coast are the only effective ways to prevent further threats to deep-sea ecosystems, successful management of plastic waste is possible through internationally harmonized practices based on scientifically sound knowledge.

Photo: JAMSTEC

Reference: Chiba et al., 2018. Human footprint in the abyss: 30 year records of deep-sea plastic debris. Marine Policy