Quantifying and Characterizing Microplastics in Deep-Sea Sediment
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Authors
Catherine Evelyn Wardinski
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Marine Science
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Abstract
The ultimate fate and transport of plastics once they reach the environment are not well known, making it difficult to understand their impacts on marine ecosystems. The application of standardized and accurate methods to measure microplastics in deep-sea sediments is vital to comparing samples across oceans; gaining a more holistic understanding of the problem. This thesis reviews 16 past studies of microplastic analysis in sediment cores and found the studies to vary quite substantially in both methods used and reporting metrics, making it difficult to compare between studies. These recommendations served as guidelines for a sediment core analysis along an almost 800 km transect in the North Pacific. Using density separation and Py-GC/MS to identify polymers, there was a difference between the different sites, with locations closer to shore having more polymers detected than those offshore. These results allow us to start to understand how plastic moves through the marine ecosystem.
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Hawaii Pacific University