Baseline Survey on the Accumulation of Microdebris in the Intertidal Sediments of a Reference Estuarine System (Mira Estuary, Portugal)
1
MARE—Marine and Environmental Sciences Centre, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Lisbon 1749-016, Portugal
2
Departamento de Biologia Vegetal, Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, Campo Grande, Lisbon 1749-016, Portugal
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Oceans 2020, 1(2), 47-55; https://doi.org/10.3390/oceans1020005
Received: 25 March 2020
/
Revised: 23 April 2020
/
Accepted: 29 April 2020
/
Published: 30 April 2020
Microdebris are nowadays a new emerging threat to marine ecosystems. Estuarine systems are considered sinks of contaminants, retaining these in their sediments. Nevertheless, baseline studies are essential, especially in reference estuarine systems such as the Mira Estuary, in order to establish reference conditions for other ecosystem assessment studies. Microdebris were extracted by density separation with saturated NaCl from sediment samples collected at the bare intertidal area of the lower sector of the Mira Estuary. Sediment vertical profiles showed a high abundance of microdebris, dominated by spherical and fibre-like microdebris, but also presenting metallic and uncategorized items. It was possible to observe that microdebris accumulation had its maximum concentration at a depth of 10 cm, indicating a recent increase in its usage and prevalence on this estuarine system. Comparing the item density from this work with previous studies on other aquatic ecosystems, it was found that the sediments analysed here present a very high concentration of microdebris. Although the Mira Estuary has been considered as a reference condition for the classical chemical contaminant descriptors considered in the Water Framework Directive, the data here presented indicate that this concept should be revisited adding microdebris contamination.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
microplastics; intertidal mudflats; estuary
▼
Show Figures
Figure 1
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Duarte, B.; Manjate, E.; Caçador, I. Baseline Survey on the Accumulation of Microdebris in the Intertidal Sediments of a Reference Estuarine System (Mira Estuary, Portugal). Oceans 2020, 1, 47-55. https://doi.org/10.3390/oceans1020005
AMA Style
Duarte B, Manjate E, Caçador I. Baseline Survey on the Accumulation of Microdebris in the Intertidal Sediments of a Reference Estuarine System (Mira Estuary, Portugal). Oceans. 2020; 1(2):47-55. https://doi.org/10.3390/oceans1020005
Chicago/Turabian StyleDuarte, Bernardo, Edite Manjate, and Isabel Caçador. 2020. "Baseline Survey on the Accumulation of Microdebris in the Intertidal Sediments of a Reference Estuarine System (Mira Estuary, Portugal)" Oceans 1, no. 2: 47-55. https://doi.org/10.3390/oceans1020005
Find Other Styles
