SGER: Collaborative Research: Exploring a Long-term Record of Plastic Pollution in the North Atlantic

塑料已经成为海洋中的一种主要污染物。塑料的耐久性表现为在海洋环境中的寿命可能从一年到几十年不等，具体取决于其物理和化学形式。它的浮力还允许它被风和洋流输送到很远的距离，通常聚集在汇聚区。这些特性和工艺导致塑料成为海洋垃圾的最主要形式，占海洋垃圾总数的60%到80%。值得注意的是，其丰度和分布的海洋学趋势在时间和空间上都没有受到很好的限制。然而，这些信息对于编制记录是必要的，以便将当前和未来的趋势放在长期可变性的背景下，并确定当前和未来的控制措施是否成功。在这笔小额探索性研究补助金(SGER)的资助下，伍兹霍尔海洋研究所和海洋教育协会(SEA)的研究人员将探索北大西洋SEA进行的塑料采样记录。海洋是一个致力于研究海洋环境及其与地球和人类事务关系的教育机构。在过去的24年里，SEA与包括本科生在内的科学人员一起进行了数百次纽斯顿网拖网，并对塑料和浮游动物进行了量化。这一几乎没有被开发的记录，可以为了解塑料在海洋中的分布和行为提供宝贵的见解。研究小组--一名环境化学家和一名物理海洋学家--将综合这些数据，并将结果放在海洋学的背景下。他们希望通过利用大量的塑料数据和使用严格统计分析的辅助海洋学数据来实现后者。他们预计，他们的发现将为海中收集的北太平洋塑料的较短记录提供一个模型。最后，他们将利用这些数据来考虑塑料可能驱动或调节的其他化学海洋过程，如从表层海洋输出到沉积物中，天然有机物的吸附，以及对颗粒有机物测量和循环的影响。更广泛的影响：这一努力将与邻近的两个海洋机构一起开展一项合作努力，尽管它们距离很近，但这种合作并不常见。大约20名本科生将参与这个项目的过程(每次邮轮7次邮轮约3名学生)。这些海洋学生将成为一个活跃的研究项目的一部分，预计该项目将产生对海洋环境的重大理解，并对海洋污染研究产生兴奋。

Plastics have emerged as a major contaminants in the ocean. The durability of plastic is manifested by a lifetime in the marine environment that may range from a year to decades, depending on its physical and chemical form. Its buoyancy also allows it to be transported great distances by winds and currents, often pooling in convergent zones. These properties and processes have lead plastic to become the most predominant form of marine litter, varying between 60 and 80% of total marine debris. Remarkably, oceanographic trends in its abundance and distribution are not well constrained either temporally or spatially. Yet, this information is necessary for developing records so that current and future trends can be placed in the context of long-term variability and to determine the success of current and future control measures. With funding from this Small Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER), researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Sea Education Association (SEA) will explore a record of plastic sampling performed by SEA in the North Atlantic. SEA is an educational institution dedicated to the study of the ocean environment and its relationship to the Earth and to human affairs. For the past 24 years, SEA with a scientific crew including undergraduates has performed hundreds of neuston net tows and quantified plastics as well as zooplankton. This record, which has been virtually untapped, could provide invaluable insight into the distribution and behavior of plastics in the ocean. The research team -- an environmental chemist and a physical oceanographer -- will synthesize these data and place the results in an oceanographic context. They expect to achieve the latter by taking advantage of the extensive data for plastics and ancillary oceanographic data using rigorous statistical analysis. They anticipate that their findings will serve as a model for a shorter record of plastics in the North Pacific that SEA has collected. Finally, they will use these data to consider other chemical oceanographic processes that plastic may either drive or modulate, such as export from the surface ocean into sediments, sorption of natural organic matter, and the impacts on particulate organic matter measurements and cycling. Broader Impacts: This effort will join two neighboring marine institutions in a collaborative effort that has not often occurred despite their proximity. Approximately 20 undergraduates will be involved over the course of this project (~3 students per cruise over 7 cruises). These SEA students will become part of an active research project that can be expected to yield significant understanding of the marine environment and excitement about marine pollution research.