Current and Future Effects of Microplastics on Marine Shelf Ecosystems (MINIMISE)

海洋塑料碎片在全球各地都有记录，其对海洋野生动物和海洋健康功能造成伤害的可能性是当前令人非常关注的一个领域。微观塑料碎片（尺寸小于5毫米且没有更小尺寸限制的微塑料）是一个特别令人关注的问题，因为它的小尺寸允许它被许多海洋生物消耗，包括那些在海洋食物网底部和/或供人类食用的生物。沿海海洋尤其脆弱；它们靠近造成污染的人类活动，同时它们是支持大量海洋生物的高产栖息地。保护这些脆弱的栖息地免受微塑料的任何风险是一项高度优先事项，但由于缺乏基本知识而受到阻碍；用什么方法在海洋样本和野生动物中测量它们，微塑料在海洋环境中是如何移动和行为的，它们是如何进入海洋动物体内的，对个体动物和海洋生态系统的健康功能有什么影响。在这个项目中，我们汇集了4所大学、国家海洋学中心和环境、渔业和农业科学中心（Cefas）来解决这些关键的知识空白，重点关注英国大陆架海域。我们的联盟包括在聚合物科学和微塑料作为污染物的生态毒理学方面具有丰富专业知识的科学家，他们是该领域的先驱。这一独特的专业知识因杰出的早期职业科学家带来的新的、令人兴奋的方法而得到加强，这些科学家在理解海洋生态系统的反应方面具有专业知识，包括在微生物水平上以及使用计算方法来计算环境风险。我们设计了一个工作计划，其中包括许多尖端的新技术进步，包括一种名为FLAIR（荧光辅助红外显微镜）的测量微塑料的新方法，它提供了一次快速筛选许多样品的潜力，使我们能够不受技术限制地制定实验计划。我们将开发使用高灵敏度的生物成像技术来可视化活组织内部的微塑料（高光谱成像，相干抗斯托克斯拉曼光谱）和定量全身放射自显影（QWBA），以追踪微塑料如何在猎物动物和它们的捕食者之间移动。我们将确定微塑料的存在以及海水中可以吸收的无处不在的优先污染物的例子如何影响海洋无脊椎动物和鱼类的生物学。我们还将确定微塑料和污染物如何在不同的海洋化学条件下影响海洋陆架海洋沉积物和生活在其中的生物的功能。这很重要，因为这些过程支持海洋生物的许多方面。最后，我们将通过所有合作伙伴正在进行的活动，将所有这些数据与项目可用的非常广泛的现有监测数据结合起来，使用最新的综合风险评估方法，为英国大陆架海域构建地理空间风险地图。这一独特的风险地图将提供一种预测工具，用于确定微塑料污染的影响可能发生和风险最大的地方，使政策制定者能够做出有科学依据的主张，例如保护脆弱的栖息地、水产养殖、鱼类产卵区、渔业活动和其他相关生态系统服务。它还将提供一种跟踪补救行动的手段，并调查是否存在比微塑料本身更快、更容易测量的微塑料污染的“替代品”。

Marine plastic debris has been recorded across all parts of the globe and its potential to cause harm to marine wildlife and the healthy functioning of the oceans is an area of huge current concern. Microscopic plastic debris, (microplastic <5 mm in size and with no lower size limit), is a particular concern since its small size allows it to be consumed by many marine organisms, including those at the base of marine food webs and/or intended for human consumption. Coastal oceans are particularly vulnerable; they are in close proximity to human activities that contribute towards pollution and at the same time they are highly productive habitats that support a high abundance of marine life. Protecting these vulnerable habitats from any risk from microplastics is a high priority, but is hindered by a lack of fundamental knowledge; of what methods to use to measure them in marine samples and wildlife, of how microplastics move and behave in the marine environment, how they get into marine animals and what the consequences are for individual animals and for the healthy function of marine ecosystems. In this project we have brought together 4 Universities, the National Oceanography Centre and the Centre for the Environment, Fisheries and Agricultural Sciences (Cefas) to tackle these critical knowledge gaps, focusing on the UK Shelf seas. Our consortium includes scientists with a wealth of expertise in polymer science and the ecotoxicology of microplastics as pollutants, and who have pioneered the field. This unique expertise is strengthened by the addition of new, exciting approaches brought by excellent early career scientists with expertise in understanding the responses of marine ecosystems including at the microbial level and in using computational approaches to calculate environmental risk.We have designed a programme of work that includes many cutting edge new advances in technology, including a new method for measuring microplastics called FLAIR (Fluorescence assisted infrared microscopy) that offer the potential for rapid screening of many samples at once, allowing us to make experimental plans unhindered by technological limitations. We will develop the use of highly sensitive bio-imaging techniques to visualise microplastics deep within living tissues (Hyperspectral imaging, Coherent anti-Stokes Raman spectroscopy) and Quantittive Whole Body Autoradiography (QWBA) for tracing how microplastics move between prey animals and their predators. We will determine how the presence of microplastics and examples of the ubiquitous priority pollutants that can sorb to them in seawater affect the biology of marine invertebrates and fish. We will also determine how microplastics and contaminants affect the functioning of marine shelf seas sediments and the organisms that live in them under different ocean chemistry conditions. This is important because these processes support many aspects of marine life. Finally, we will bring all of this data together with the very extensive body of existing monitoring data available to the project through ongoing activities of all partners, to construct a geospatial risk map for the UK shelf seas, using the latest approaches in integrated risk assessment. This unique risk map will offer a predictive tool for working out where impacts from microplastics pollution are likely to occur and risks are greatest, enabling policy makers to make science-backed assertions, e.g. to protect vulnerable habitats, aquaculture, fish spawning areas, fishing activities and other relevant ecosystem services. It will also provide a means of tracking remedial actions and to investigate whether there are 'proxies' for the presence of microplastic pollution that are quicker and easier to measure than microplastics themselves.