The deep sea is a major sink for microplastic debris

By L. Woodall, A. Sànchez-Vidal, M. Canals, G. Paterson, R. Coppock, Victoria A. Sleight, A. Calafat, Alex Rogers, B. Narayanaswamy, Richard C. Thompson. Royal Society Open Science, 2014

1,634 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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?

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/666d9bc41af99112314a32d6fd194fdaf6a3be4d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. A. Lusher
2. E. van Sebille
3. P. Ryan
4. L. Su
5. Huahong Shi
6. L. Hoogenboom
7. A. Koelmans
8. Dongqi Yang

In Pollution

1. L. Hoogenboom
2. E. van Sebille
3. A. Lusher
4. P. Ryan
5. L. Su
6. Huahong Shi
7. A. Koelmans
8. Dongqi Yang

Citations in the corpus

• Feasting on microplastics: ingestion by and effects on marine organisms (2018, background): “Consequently, the ocean floor has become a major repository for microplastic debris and organic pollutants (Woodall et al. 2014).”
• Twenty years of microplastic pollution research—what have we learned? (2024, background): “Over the past two decades, hundreds of papers ,includingon shorelines( 18 ); in the deep sea ( 19 ); in the water column ( 20 ); in sea ice ( 21 ); in organisms across biological taxa, from invertebrates at the base of the food web to apex predators ( 22 , 23 ); and, more recently, in rivers,…”
• Effects of biofouling on the sinking behavior of microplastics (2017, background): “…in the marine realm (Andrady 2011, Law 2017, Oberbeckmann et al 2015, van Sebille et al 2015), occurring from the equator to the poles (Cózar et al 2017), anthropogenic centers to remote areas, from beaches (Browne et al 2011) to the deep sea (Van Cauwenberghe et al 2013, Woodall et al 2014).”
• A Global Perspective on Microplastics (2020, background): “This correlates with previously discussed observational evidence that microplastics found in the deep sea were smaller than 200 μm (Van Cauwenberghe et al., 2013; Woodall et al., 2014).”
• Ups and Downs in the Ocean: Effects of Biofouling on Vertical Transport of Microplastics (2017, positive): “A study on microplastics in deep sea sediments indicated that most particles found were denser than seawater, 22 which is in general agreement with our modeling results.”
• Contributions of Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy in microplastic pollution research: A review (2020, methodology): “For example, in one study, the spectra matched with HQI 0.7 were accepted, those with HQI 0.6 were rejected and spectra with HQI ¼ 0.6 were individually interpreted (Woodall et al., 2014).”
• Microplastic ingestion and diet composition of planktivorous fish (2020, background): “Some studies point to demersal fish as being more prone to accumulating MP than pelagic fish (e.g., Bellas et al. 2016; Bessa et al. 2018), this is probably associated with plastic/MP sink and accumulation in the bottom sediments (Woodall et al. 2014).”
• Microplastics in the aquatic and terrestrial environment: sources (with a specific focus on personal care products), fate and effects (2016, background): “Microplastics were also detected in deep sea sediments, e.g. in the northeast North Atlantic and south-west Indian Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea at water depths between 300 and 3500 m [123].”
• Microplastics in the Marine Environment: Distribution, Interactions and Effects (2015, background): “In fact, the deep seafloor may be considered a major sink for microplastic debris (Woodall et al. 2014) and explain the current mismatch between estimated global inputs of plastic debris to the oceans (Jambeck et al.”
• Does size and buoyancy affect the long-distance transport of floating debris? (2015, background): “Woodall et al (2014) suggested that the deep sea is a likely sink for this ‘lost’ microplastic.”