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

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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.