The deep sea is a major sink for microplastic debris

Royal Society Open Science - Tập 1 Số 4 - Trang 140317 - 2014
Lucy C. Woodall1, Anna Sánchez‐Vidal2, Miquel Canals2, Gordon Paterson1, Rachel Coppock3, Victoria A. Sleight3, Antoni Calafat2, Alex D. Rogers4, Bhavani E. Narayanaswamy5, Richard C. Thompson3
1Department of Life Sciences, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London, SW7 5BD, UK
2GRC Geociències Marines, Departament d’ Estratigrafia, Paleontologia i Geociències Marines, Universitat de Barcelona, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
3Marine Biology and Ecology Research Centre, School of Marine Science and Engineering, Plymouth University, Plymouth, Devon PL4 8 AA, UK
4Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Tinbergen Building, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK
5The Scottish Association for Marine Science, Scottish Marine Institute, Oban, Argyll, PA37 1QA, UK

Tóm tắt

Marine debris, mostly consisting of plastic, is a global problem, negatively impacting wildlife, tourism and shipping. However, despite the durability of plastic, and the exponential increase in its production, monitoring data show limited evidence of concomitant increasing concentrations in marine habitats. There appears to be a considerable proportion of the manufactured plastic that is unaccounted for in surveys tracking the fate of environmental plastics. Even the discovery of widespread accumulation of microscopic fragments (microplastics) in oceanic gyres and shallow water sediments is unable to explain the missing fraction. Here, we show that deep-sea sediments are a likely sink for microplastics. Microplastic, in the form of fibres, was up to four orders of magnitude more abundant (per unit volume) in deep-sea sediments from the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean than in contaminated sea-surface waters. Our results show evidence for a large and hitherto unknown repository of microplastics. The dominance of microfibres points to a previously underreported and unsampled plastic fraction. Given the vastness of the deep sea and the prevalence of microplastics at all sites we investigated, the deep-sea floor appears to provide an answer to the question— where is all the plastic?

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Royal Society Open Science

Tập 1 Số 4

140317

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