Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean
[Image: see text] Understanding residence times of plastic in the ocean is a major knowledge gap in plastic pollution studies. Observations report a large mismatch between plastic load estimates from worldwide production and disposal and actual plastics floating at the sea surface. Surveys of the wa...
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American Chemical Society
2022
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Online Access: | http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9670853/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302504 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 |
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:9670853 2023-05-15T17:30:34+02:00 Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean Galgani, Luisa Goßmann, Isabel Scholz-Böttcher, Barbara Jiang, Xiangtao Liu, Zhanfei Scheidemann, Lindsay Schlundt, Cathleen Engel, Anja 2022-10-27 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9670853/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302504 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 en eng American Chemical Society http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9670853/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 © 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Permits non-commercial access and re-use, provided that author attribution and integrity are maintained; but does not permit creation of adaptations or other derivative works (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). CC-BY-NC-ND CC-BY-NC Environ Sci Technol Text 2022 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 2022-11-20T03:05:54Z [Image: see text] Understanding residence times of plastic in the ocean is a major knowledge gap in plastic pollution studies. Observations report a large mismatch between plastic load estimates from worldwide production and disposal and actual plastics floating at the sea surface. Surveys of the water column, from the surface to the deep sea, are rare. Most recent work, therefore, addressed the “missing plastic” question using modeling or laboratory approaches proposing biofouling and degradation as the main removal processes in the ocean. Through organic matrices, plastic can affect the biogeochemical and microbial cycling of carbon and nutrients. For the first time, we provide in situ measured vertical fluxes of microplastics deploying drifting sediment traps in the North Atlantic Gyre from 50 m down to 600 m depth, showing that through biogenic polymers plastic can be embedded into rapidly sinking particles also known as marine snow. We furthermore show that the carbon contained in plastic can represent up to 3.8% of the total downward flux of particulate organic carbon. Our results shed light on important pathways regulating the transport of microplastics in marine systems and on potential interactions with the marine carbon cycle, suggesting microplastic removal through the “biological plastic pump”. Text North Atlantic PubMed Central (PMC) Environmental Science & Technology 56 22 15638 15649 |
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[Image: see text] Understanding residence times of plastic in the ocean is a major knowledge gap in plastic pollution studies. Observations report a large mismatch between plastic load estimates from worldwide production and disposal and actual plastics floating at the sea surface. Surveys of the water column, from the surface to the deep sea, are rare. Most recent work, therefore, addressed the “missing plastic” question using modeling or laboratory approaches proposing biofouling and degradation as the main removal processes in the ocean. Through organic matrices, plastic can affect the biogeochemical and microbial cycling of carbon and nutrients. For the first time, we provide in situ measured vertical fluxes of microplastics deploying drifting sediment traps in the North Atlantic Gyre from 50 m down to 600 m depth, showing that through biogenic polymers plastic can be embedded into rapidly sinking particles also known as marine snow. We furthermore show that the carbon contained in plastic can represent up to 3.8% of the total downward flux of particulate organic carbon. Our results shed light on important pathways regulating the transport of microplastics in marine systems and on potential interactions with the marine carbon cycle, suggesting microplastic removal through the “biological plastic pump”. |
format |
Text |
author |
Galgani, Luisa Goßmann, Isabel Scholz-Böttcher, Barbara Jiang, Xiangtao Liu, Zhanfei Scheidemann, Lindsay Schlundt, Cathleen Engel, Anja |
spellingShingle |
Galgani, Luisa Goßmann, Isabel Scholz-Böttcher, Barbara Jiang, Xiangtao Liu, Zhanfei Scheidemann, Lindsay Schlundt, Cathleen Engel, Anja Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean |
author_facet |
Galgani, Luisa Goßmann, Isabel Scholz-Böttcher, Barbara Jiang, Xiangtao Liu, Zhanfei Scheidemann, Lindsay Schlundt, Cathleen Engel, Anja |
author_sort |
Galgani, Luisa |
title |
Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean |
title_short |
Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean |
title_full |
Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean |
title_fullStr |
Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean |
title_full_unstemmed |
Hitchhiking into the Deep: How Microplastic Particles are Exported through the Biological Carbon Pump in the North Atlantic Ocean |
title_sort |
hitchhiking into the deep: how microplastic particles are exported through the biological carbon pump in the north atlantic ocean |
publisher |
American Chemical Society |
publishDate |
2022 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9670853/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302504 https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 |
genre |
North Atlantic |
genre_facet |
North Atlantic |
op_source |
Environ Sci Technol |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9670853/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36302504 http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 |
op_rights |
© 2022 The Authors. Published by American Chemical Society https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Permits non-commercial access and re-use, provided that author attribution and integrity are maintained; but does not permit creation of adaptations or other derivative works (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY-NC-ND CC-BY-NC |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04712 |
container_title |
Environmental Science & Technology |
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56 |
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22 |
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15638 |
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15649 |
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1766127414737371136 |