For the week of 11 November 2019
Greetings OpenChannels Community Members,
Environmental Pollution has published, Details of plastic ingestion and fibre contamination in North Sea fishes.
Abstract: This study combines published datasets with unpublished data on plastic ingestion in several North Sea fish species. The combined dataset of 4389 individuals from 15 species allows the analysis of spatial distribution and temporal variability of plastic uptake in fish. Airborne fibre contamination was observed to be the main contributor to fibres encountered in the samples. The number of fibres in samples was strongly related to the time needed to process a sample, not to the number of individual fishes in the sample. Accurate correction for secondary fibre contamination was not possible, but corrections required would be similar to fibre numbers observed in the samples. Consequently, all fibres were omitted from further analysis. The frequency of occurrence and the average number of plastics in fish is generally low (1.8% and 0.022 pieces per organism respectively), with only cod having a higher prevalence (12.3%). While latitude of catch locations influences plastic uptake in fish, no correlation with the distance to the coast was found. Slightly less plastics were ingested in winter, and a decrease in plastics ingested was observed between 2009 and 2018. These factors should be considered when fish species, catch location and time are discussed as indicators for plastic pollution in the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive. We recommend considering demersal cod and pelagic sprat as two species suitable for monitoring plastic ingestion in biota, both on the seafloor and in the water column.
As always, if we've missed anything, please feel free to let us know. You may simply reply to this message, or you may email Allie directly at: allie [at] octogroup.org.
You can read everything (not just the free stuff) we have found this week at https://www.openchannels.org/literature-update/2019-11-13.
Additionally, you can browse literature by the week we've added it at https://www.openchannels.org/literature-by-week.
Thank you for being part of the OpenChannels Community,
– Allie Brown, Raye Evrard, and the rest of the OpenChannels Team