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Hidden evidence of marine debris impacts on marine mammals: the overlooked role of grey literature in the Southwestern Atlantic.
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This review combined published scientific studies with harder-to-find sources like conference abstracts, theses, and technical reports to study plastic debris affecting marine mammals in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Researchers found 71 studies total, most of which (66%) were from these overlooked sources, documenting ingestion or entanglement in 31 marine mammal species, suggesting that relying only on published research underestimates the problem.
Interactions between anthropogenic marine debris (AMD), particularly plastics, and marine mammals are widely recognized as a global conservation concern. However, current assessments rely predominantly on peer-reviewed literature, potentially overlooking a substantial body of evidence contained in grey literature. A comprehensive literature review was conducted in Portuguese, Spanish, and English using Google Scholar and Scopus, complemented by ResearchGate alerts, reference-list screening, and searches of institutional repositories and conference proceedings. Peer-reviewed publications and grey literature, including conference abstracts, theses, and technical reports, published between 1982 and 2024 were screened and classified according to study type, thematic focus, interaction type, and methodology. We identified 71 studies, of which 47 (66.2%) were grey literature and 24 (33.8%) were peer-reviewed publications. These studies documented interactions involving 31 marine mammal species from 10 families, including ingestion in 27 species and entanglement in 15 species. Most studies were conducted in Brazil (51; 71.8%), followed by Argentina (18; 25.4%) and Uruguay (2; 2.8%). More than 30% of the studies had primary objectives unrelated to AMD, including trophic ecology, indicating that AMD interactions were frequently reported as secondary findings. By integrating peer-reviewed and grey literature sources, our study reveals a substantial body of previously underrepresented evidence on AMD interactions in marine mammals in the Southwestern Atlantic. The predominance of grey literature and the geographic and thematic biases identified indicate that restricting assessments to peer-reviewed publications would substantially underestimate both the occurrence and diversity of these interactions. Incorporating diverse evidence sources is therefore essential to improve regional assessments and inform conservation and management strategies.
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