Microplastics in Arctic polar waters: the first reported values of particles in surface and sub-surface samples

By A. Lusher, V. Tirelli, I. O’Connor, R. Officer. Scientific Reports, 2015

947 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Plastic, as a form of marine litter, is found in varying quantities and sizes around the globe from surface waters to deep-sea sediments. Identifying patterns of microplastic distribution will benefit an understanding of the scale of their potential effect on the environment and organisms. As sea ice extent is reducing in the Arctic, heightened shipping and fishing activity may increase marine pollution in the area. Microplastics may enter the region following ocean transport and local input, although baseline contamination measurements are still required. Here we present the first study of microplastics in Arctic waters, south and southwest of Svalbard, Norway. Microplastics were found in surface (top 16 cm) and sub-surface (6 m depth) samples using two independent techniques. Origins and pathways bringing microplastic to the Arctic remain unclear. Particle composition (95% fibres) suggests they may either result from the breakdown of larger items (transported over large distances by prevailing currents, or derived from local vessel activity), or input in sewage and wastewater from coastal areas. Concurrent observations of high zooplankton abundance suggest a high probability for marine biota to encounter microplastics and a potential for trophic interactions. Further research is required to understand the effects of microplastic-biota interaction within this productive environment.

Subfields: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Ocean Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/05241d8bdea01824c526d628012ea2cdec736199

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Citations in the corpus

The physical oceanography of the transport of floating marine debris (2020, background): “The polewardmigration of floating plastics from highly populated latitudes to polar regions has been reported in the Northeastern Atlantic sector of the Arctic Ocean (Lusher et al 2015, Bergmann et al 2016, Cózar et al 2017), and the central Arctic Ocean (Kanhai et al 2018).”
Large microplastic particles in sediments of tributaries of the River Thames, UK - Abundance, sources and methods for effective quantification. (2017, background): “Since 2004, many studies have investigated the presence and effects of marine microplastic debris (Arthur and Baker, 2011; Faure et al., 2012; Law et al., 2014; Lusher et al., 2015; Van Cauwenberghe and Janssen, 2014).”
Ecotoxicological effects of microplastics on biota: a review (2018, background): “Extensive information is available on the occurrence, fate, distribution, and accumulation of microplastics on marine biota (Thompson et al. 2009; Wagner et al. 2014) from Arctic to Antarctic habitats (Eriksen et al. 2013; Obbard et al. 2014; Lusher et al. 2015).”
Microplastics in the Antarctic marine system: An emerging area of research. (2017, positive): “Recent observations from the Arctic showed that remote Polar Regions were not beyond the reach of microplastic pollution (Lusher et al., 2015a).”
Microplastics in bivalves and their habitat in relation to shellfish aquaculture proximity in coastal British Columbia, Canada (2019, background): “This possibility is supported by the ubiquitous presence of MPs in the Arctic Ocean (Lusher et al. 2015) and in the deep sea (Woodall et al.”