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

塑料已成为海洋中的主要污染物。塑料的耐用性体现在其在海洋环境中的寿命，根据其物理和化学形式，寿命可能从一年到几十年不等。它的浮力也使它可以被风和洋流带到很远的地方，经常聚集在汇聚区。这些特性和过程导致塑料成为海洋垃圾的最主要形式，占海洋垃圾总量的60%至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得到很好的约束。然而，这些信息对于建立记录是必要的，以便可以将当前和未来的趋势置于长期变化的背景下，并确定当前和未来控制措施的成功。在这项探索性研究小额赠款（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Sea在北大西洋进行的塑料采样记录。海洋环境研究所是一个致力于研究海洋环境及其与地球和人类事务的关系的教育机构。在过去的24年里，SEA和一个包括本科生在内的科学团队进行了数百次神经网络分析，并对塑料和浮游动物进行了量化。这一几乎未被开发的记录可以为海洋中塑料的分布和行为提供宝贵的见解。研究小组由一名环境化学家和一名物理海洋学家组成，他们将综合这些数据，并将结果置于海洋学背景下。他们希望通过利用广泛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，他们的发现将成为SEA收集的北太平洋更短的塑料记录的模型。最后，他们将使用这些数据来考虑塑料可能驱动或调节的其他海洋化学过程，例如从海洋表面向沉积物的出口，天然有机物质的吸收，以及对颗粒有机物质测量和循环的影响。更广泛的影响：这项工作将把两个相邻的海洋机构联合起来，尽管它们距离很近，但这种合作并不经常发生。大约20名本科生将参与这个项目的过程（大约3名学生在7次航行中每次航行）。这些SEA学生将参与一项积极的研究项目，期望对海洋环境有深刻的了解，并对海洋污染研究产生兴趣。

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.