Microplastics in Marine Environments: Occurrence, Distribution and Effects

A special issue of Oceans (ISSN 2673-1924).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2021) | Viewed by 7465

Special Issue Editor

Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde, Seestr. 15, 18119 Rostock, Germany
Interests: interactions between physical and biological processes; North Atlantic and its adjuscent seas

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Today, we recognise that plastic is ubiquitous in the marine realm occurring from the equator to the poles, from anthropogenic centres to remote areas and from beaches to the deep sea because of a global high rate of plastic waste mismanagement allowing millions of tons of plastic waste to enter the ocean every year. Despite the growing number of microplastics studies in recent years, a large knowledge gap concerning microplastics behaviour in the pelagic and deep ocean remains. For example, the estimated number of microplastics floating at the surface accounts only for 1% of the assumed input. At the same time, it is unclear how microplastics are vertically distributed in the water column, or how fast they sink in the water column. A ubiquitous vertical occurrence of microplastics in the water column is intuitive if the sinking of microplastics from the ocean surface is assumed to make deep sea sediments a sink for microplastics. In situ observations of its behaviour are almost entirely missing.

The Special Issue “Microplastics in Marine Environments: Occurrence, Distribution and Effects” of the Oceans journal seeks original contributions in the field of all geosciences disciplines concerned with microplastics studies from detection methods and/or sensor development over temporal and spatial distributions to modelling efforts. Articles on topics of interest to environmental scientists as well as policy makers and wider public addressing the keywords will be considered for publication.

Keywords: 

  • Microplastics in biogeochemical provinces
  • Regional distribution of microplastics
  • Source and sinks of microplastics
  • Microplastics degradation
  • Microplastics alteration
  • Detection methods
  • Effects of biofilm formation
  • Sinking velocity
  • Microplastics as a sink/source of pollutants
  • Microplastics as a vehicle for virus transport
  • Modelling microplastics behaviour in marine realm
  • Microplastics inventory
  • In situ observations
  • Laboratory experiments

Now, the Special Issue is opening for submission. Moreover, this will be a dynamic Special Issue, and articles will be published as soon as the reviewers and editors are ready to accept them, without waiting for the deadline for the entire Special Issue to arrive.

Prof. Dr. Joanna J. Waniek
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Oceans is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Published Papers (1 paper)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

17 pages, 1950 KiB  
Article
Canopy Accumulation: Are Seagrass Meadows a Sink of Microplastics?
by Richard K. F. Unsworth, Alex Higgs, Bettina Walter, Leanne C. Cullen-Unsworth, Isabella Inman and Benjamin L. Jones
Oceans 2021, 2(1), 162-178; https://doi.org/10.3390/oceans2010010 - 12 Feb 2021
Cited by 22 | Viewed by 6454
Abstract
A growing body of research is documenting the accumulation of microplastics within marine sediments around the world. The hydrodynamic influences of seagrasses in coastal environments are shown to increase sedimentation of finer particles and as a result there has been speculation that this [...] Read more.
A growing body of research is documenting the accumulation of microplastics within marine sediments around the world. The hydrodynamic influences of seagrasses in coastal environments are shown to increase sedimentation of finer particles and as a result there has been speculation that this attribute will lead to seagrass meadows acting as a site of elevated microplastic contamination. To date a range of localised studies have provided conflicting answers to this hypothesis. Seagrass meadows provide multiple ecosystem services including vital support roles for a range of fisheries; therefore, there are considerable human health implications for understanding their role as sinks of microplastics. This research investigated the abundance and diversity of microplastics present in temperate North Atlantic seagrass meadow sediments relative to unvegetated sediments and examined how they correlate with the meadow structure and the sediment type. We also placed this data in the context of the current knowledge of microplastics in seagrass sediments through a global meta-analysis of published data. Eight seagrass meadows and adjacent unvegetated sites around the UK were sampled to test for the abundance of microplastic particles in the sediment. Microplastics were found in 98% of the samples, with fibres making up 91.8% of all microplastics identified. Abundance was recorded to overall be 215 ± 163 microplastic particles (MP) kg−1 Dry Weight (DW) of sediment in seagrass and 221 ± 236 MP kg−1 DW of sediment in unvegetated habitats. There were no significant differences found between the number of MP with respect to vegetation. We report evidence of the almost ubiquitous contamination of seagrass sediments with microplastics both in the UK and globally but find that the contamination reflects a general build-up of microplastics in the wider environment rather than becoming concentrated within seagrass as an enhanced sink. Microplastic build up in sediments is hypothesised to be the result of local hydrodynamics and plastic sources rather than the result of elevated habitat level concentration. Although not of a higher abundance in seagrass, such contamination in seagrass is of cause for concern given the high dependency of many species of fish on these habitat types and the potential for plastics to move up the food chain. Full article
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop