Microplastics
About Microplastics
Plastics are all around us – food containers we eat from, the furniture we sit on, fabric we wear, and more. Due to global inefficiencies in waste management, every year around 20 billion pounds of plastic waste enter the oceans. Once in the oceans, floating plastic will travel long distances and accumulate on coastlines and in open ocean circulation zones called gyres. On this journey, large plastics will fragment into smaller pieces of plastics called microplastics. These microplastics have been shown to be ingested by organisms where they can disrupt normal physiological and immunological processes. Moreover, microplastics can affect whole ocean systems as we know them, including nutrient and carbon cycling. In other words, these small particles can have a big impact!
Hōkūleʻa Sampling
The Coastal and Marine Pollution Lab at VIMS, led by Professor Meredith Evans Seeley, will measure plastic pollution along the voyage. Water samples (1L bottle) and 180-micron net tow samples will be collected at sea and in ports to measure microplastics. In port, plastic samples from beaches will also be collected with student groups via sieving sand. The Seeley Lab will analyze these samples to measure the composition and abundance of plastic, so that we can better understand the extent of microplastic pollution in our understudied oceans and coastal reaches.
Microplastics Sampling Protocol