Trophic and direct transfer of Microplastics into the common shore crab Carcinus maenas

No abstracts are to be cited without prior reference to the author. Microscopic plastic debris is emerging as a global conservation issue. Ingestion of microplastics has been demonstrated in a range of marine animals both in the laboratory and in the oceans, but we know little of how microplastics may be transferred across trophic levels. Here, we used mussels (Mytilus edulis) and crabs (Carcinus maenas) to investigate the bioaccumulation and trophic transfer of 10μm fluorescently labelled polystyrene microspheres. Organisms were exposed to microplastics through trophic transfer (oral ingestion) or direct exposure (via the ventilation process) and internal distribution, gut transit and depuration were studied using dissection and fluorescence microscopy. Our results show that microplastics were rapidly distributed across body tissues and provide gut transit times in our trophic model and through uptake across the gill in our ventilation model. We will present an update of our results and discuss their wider ecological implications.