Microplastics in gentoo penguins from the Antarctic region

Bessa, Filipa; Ratcliffe, Norman ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3375-2431; Otero, Vanessa; Sobral, Paula; Marques, João C.; Waluda, Claire M. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3517-5233; Trathan, Phil N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6673-9930; Xavier, José C. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9621-6660. 2019 Microplastics in gentoo penguins from the Antarctic region. Scientific Reports, 9, 14191. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50621-2

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Text (Open Access) © The Author(s) 2019 This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. s41598-019-50621-2.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract/Summary

There is growing evidence that microplastic pollution (<5 mm in size) is now present in virtually all marine ecosystems, even in remote areas, such as the Arctic and the Antarctic. Microplastics have been found in water and sediments of the Antarctic but little is known of their ingestion by higher predators and mechanisms of their entry into Antarctic marine food webs. The goal of this study was to assess the occurrence of microplastics in a top predator, the gentoo penguin Pygoscelis papua from the Antarctic region (Bird Island, South Georgia and Signy Island, South Orkney Islands) and hence assess the potential for microplastic transfer through Antarctic marine food webs. To achieve this, the presence of microplastics in scats (as a proof of ingestion) was investigated to assess the viability of a non-invasive approach for microplastic analyses in Antarctic penguins. A total of 80 penguin scats were collected and any microplastics they contained were extracted. A total of 20% of penguin scats from both islands contained microplastics, consisting mainly of fibers and fragments with different sizes and polymer composition (mean abundance of microplastics: 0.23 ± 0.53 items individual−1 scat, comprising seven different polymers), which were lower values than those found for seabirds in other regions worldwide. No significant differences in microplastic numbers in penguin scats between the two regions were detected. These data highlight the need for further assessment of the levels of microplastics in this sensitive region of the planet, specifically studies on temporal trends and potential effects on penguins and other organisms in the Antarctic marine food web.

Item Type:	Publication - Article
Digital Object Identifier (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50621-2
ISSN:	20452322
Date made live:	07 Oct 2019 09:56 +0 (UTC)
URI:	https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/525310

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