MERI Researchers Study Microplastics in Blue Hill and Penobscot Bays

October 29 — Coastal Monitoring Coordinator Abby Barrows shared 10 years of baseline data that the Marine Environmental Research Institute (MERI) has gathered on Blue Hill Bay with students from the Deer Isle/Stonington High School (DISHS) Marine Studies Pathway. Her talk focused on the growing problem of plastic pollution in our waters and the questions researchers are asking about plastics worldwide - Are microplastics getting into our seafood? Where is all the plastic coming from?

Microplastics – minute fragments of degraded plastic items, often invisible to the naked eye – are surprisingly abundant in Blue Hill and Penobscot bays. Last year, the MERI research team found an average of 14 pieces of plastic in every liter of water they collected. At some sites, the levels of microplastics were as high as those found in heavily industrialized regions.

Microscopic plastics can be mistaken for food by the smallest marine creatures. To understand their entry into the food web, MERI launched research in collaboration with the University of New England to study the uptake of microplastics in important commercial marine species – clams, mackerel, oysters, lobsters and mussels. One hundred tissue samples collected from Blue Hill and Penobscot bays this season are being analyzed to determine the animals’ ingestion of microplastics and the toxic chemicals associated with them.

This study will continue into the winter with the help of Catharina Pieper, an international marine debris master’s student from the University of The Azores recruited by MERI for her expertise.

After Barrow’s talk, students filtered water samples for microplastics and identified the fragments under microscopes in the MERI lab. Many of these students plan fishing careers after graduation and they were curious about whether lobster gear is a source of microplastics. So far, the research has found more microplastics at sites near the Stonington and Blue Hill wastewater treatment plants than at lobster trap sites.

Another question was, How can we keep microplastics out of the ocean?

“Organize a plastic bag or single-use plastic bag ban in your town. Avoid synthetic clothing and personal care products such as toothpaste and lotions that contain abrasive microbeads,” said Barrows.