Saving Seafood

New funding to study microplastic pollution effect on Delaware Bay blue crabs

November 6, 2019 — The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is often held up as the poster child for ocean pollution. And while the collection of trash collecting in the Pacific Ocean certainly deserves attention, researchers at the University of Delaware are concerned about a smaller source of pollution, much smaller.

Through its marine debris program, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is giving the university a $325,000 grant to study the impact of microplastics on blue crab populations near the Delaware Bay. Microplastics are defined as pieces of plastic less than five millimeters in length, or smaller than a pencil eraser. According to NOAA, some microplastics are microbeads, fibers or pellets that come from cosmetics or personal care products, for instance. They can also come from larger pieces of plastic that split apart and break down after exposure to the sun.

It’s estimated that there’s about five trillion tons of marine debris in our oceans and plastics are 90% of that, said UD College of Earth, Ocean and Environment Dean Estella Atekwana. “This grant is really timely so we can advance our understanding of what plastics do to our marine ecosystems,” she said.

Read the full story at WHYY

UD gets NOAA grant to study microplastics in blue crabs

November 5, 2019 — A federal grant will help two University of Delaware researchers look at the impact of microplastics on blue crabs.

The researchers will use the $327,000 grant to examine crab larvae exposure to microplastics in the Delaware Bay.

Microplastics are the size of sesame seeds. Microbeads, a type of microplastics, can easily pass through water filtration systems and end up in lakes and oceans.

Estella Atekwana is dean of the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment. She says they hope to determine how microplastics enter the larvae.

“For us to understand the different exposure pathways where this plastics get into the seafood or marine life and within the food chain and how does this eventually get to humans,” she said. “It’s really early on, I’m not so sure that we truly understand the different pathways.”

Read the full story at Delaware Public Media

Could tiny pieces of plastic in fish become a big problem for humans?

July 30, 2019 — Most of us would agree that plastic waste is a problem.

The sheer amount of plastic thrown away by humans is staggering and easy to see on roadsides, in landfills and oceans.

Plastic bags and water and soda bottles are easily identifiable forms of plastic trash but what happens when those items break down into what are called microplastics?

The short answer is that animals eat these plastic pieces less than five millimeters in size, and a research team at UNCW is studying how contaminants in the plastic might be transferred from prey to black sea bass.

“The goal is to assess how these black sea bass might be impacted by plastic pollution,” said Cheyenne Stienbarger, a masters student at UNCW who is part of the research team. “Black sea bass are a commercially and recreationally important species along the east coast, particularly in North Carolina. We’re really hoping to get a better understanding of how these fish might be impacted.”

Read the full story at WETC

G-20 urges ‘voluntary action’ on marine plastic crisis but fails to agree on common approach

June 18, 2019 — Environment ministers from the Group of 20 on Sunday recognized an urgent need to tackle the marine plastic litter that’s choking the world’s oceans, but failed to agree on concrete measures or targets to phase out single-use plastics.

More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans every year, equivalent to a garbage truck’s worth every minute, and by 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans by weight than fish, scientists predict.

But agreeing on a common approach to the problem has proved problematic, with the United States blocking demands to set a global target to significantly reduce or phase out single-use plastics.

“Marine litter and especially marine plastic litter and microplastics, is a matter requiring urgent attention given its adverse impacts on marine ecosystems, livelihoods and industries including fisheries, tourism and shipping, and potentially on human health,” environment ministers from the G-20 said on Sunday.

The ministers said they were “determined to drive measures to resolve this issue,” while also noting that “plastics play an important role in our economies and daily lives.”

Read the full story at The Washington Post

Baby fish have started eating plastic. We haven’t yet seen the consequences

April 15, 2019 — Not long agoI went snorkeling in the Pacific Ocean, a half mile off the southwest coast of Oahu. The flanks of the Hawaiian island are steep there, and the bottom quickly disappeared beneath us as we motored out to the site. Looking back, I could see the green slopes of the Waianae Range rising to 4,000 feet behind the beach. Normally the mountains shield the water here from the trade winds. But on that day a breeze created a light chop that nearly obscured what I had come to see: a thin, oily slick of surface water, rich in organic particles, in which newborn fish were feeding and struggling to survive their first precarious weeks.

Plunging my face into the sheen, I found myself looking inside a fish nursery: The water was dotted with life you would ordinarily never notice. Fish eggs drifted like tiny lanterns, their yolk sacs glowing in the sunlight. Fish larvae small as ladybugs darted about. A sergeant major damselfish the size of a dime appeared huge by comparison as it fluttered past. Below us, a school of 12-inch, bigeye scad—like mackerel but with enormous eyes—fed on everything that had the misfortune of being small.

My guides that day, oceanographer Jamison Gove and fish biologist Jonathan Whitney of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Honolulu, are nearly three years into a research project that aims to make sense of this chaotic scene. The larval stage is the “black box” of fisheries science: Fertilized eggs go in, and young fish come out—but what happens inside remains sketchy. The larval fish are so small and fragile they’re exceedingly difficult to study. The overwhelming majority will never become adults. Yet fish populations around the world, and the animals that eat them, depend on just how many larval fish make it, and in what condition.

Read the full story at National Geographic

Low consumer awareness of microplastics in fish, finds survey

April 15, 2019 — Forty percent of consumers are aware of the issue of microplastics in fish, according to a new survey conducted by land-based salmon farming company Pure Salmon. The recently-launched company’s analysis also found that 36.5 percent had knowledge of antibiotic use in sea-farmed fish.

The results are part of a survey of 2,000 consumers in the United Kingdom and United States. Consumers in each country were asked their opinions on issues ranging from microplastics in seafood to food miles and purchasing habits.

Pure Salmon said that while awareness levels around the environmental impact of sea farming were low, two-thirds of consumers in the same survey said they would be more likely to purchase fish that has been sustainably farmed. Sixty percent of those surveyed also said they would also pay more for fish with strong sustainable and environmental credentials.

The survey also found that when it comes to awareness of microplastics, U.K. consumers were ahead of the curve (55 percent awareness) compared to Americans (37 percent). Furthermore, 81 percent said it was either important or very important to understand where fish comes from when making purchasing decisions, and that 72 percent would be more likely to purchase fish if they knew it was produced close to their home, reducing food miles.

Pure Salmon was developed by investment firm 8F Asset Management Pte. Ltd.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

Researcher studies effects of microplastics on the ocean

June 12, 2018 — Anyone who has ever struggled with knowing which plastic items they can or cannot place in their recycling bin will appreciate the complex task facing Professor Rob Hale and his students at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science.

Hale began studying plastics in the 1990s after he and Marine Scientist Mark La Guardia discovered high levels of flame retardants in fishes from the James River. They quickly realized these compounds, added to household plastics to reduce their flammability, were somehow escaping their confines and entering the aquatic environment.

Subsequent groundbreaking research by Hale’s team and others revealed high levels of flame retardants in wastewater, e-waste sites, sewage sludges, soils, sediments, and indoor dust; as well as in minnows, earthworms, insects, birds of prey, deep-sea squid and other organisms. Related research—based on concerns that these chemicals persist in the environment and tend to accumulate up the food chain—revealed health impacts in both wildlife and people, and led to worldwide limitations on the use of the most troublesome flame-retardant compounds.

Hale’s early experience with plastics research has now poised his team for a leading role in addressing the most recent worry about plastics in the environment—the growing concern about the effects of microplastics in the ocean.

Read the full story at PHYS.org

We Know Plastic Is Harming Marine Life. What About Us?

May 16, 2018 — In a laboratory at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, in Palisades, New York, Debra Lee Magadini positions a slide under a microscope and flicks on an ultraviolet light. Scrutinizing the liquefied digestive tract of a shrimp she bought at a fish market, she makes a tsk-ing sound. After examining every millimeter of the slide, she blurts, “This shrimp is fiber city!” Inside its gut, seven squiggles of plastic, dyed with Nile red stain, fluoresce.

All over the world, researchers like Magadini are staring through microscopes at tiny pieces of plastic—fibers, fragments, or microbeads—that have made their way into marine and freshwater species, both wild caught and farmed. Scientists have found microplastics in 114 aquatic species, and more than half of those end up on our dinner plates. Now they are trying to determine what that means for human health.

So far science lacks evidence that microplastics—pieces smaller than one-fifth of an inch—are affecting fish at the population level. Our food supply doesn’t seem to be under threat—at least as far as we know. But enough research has been done now to show that the fish and shellfish we enjoy are suffering from the omnipresence of this plastic. Every year five million to 14 million tons flow into our oceans from coastal areas. Sunlight, wind, waves, and heat break down that material into smaller bits that look—to plankton, bivalves, fish, and even whales—a lot like food.

Read the full story at National Geographic