Microplastics in Commercial Seafood (Invertebrates) and Seaweeds

The hidden wealth of the world is beneath the oceans. The world's ocean basins give shelter to millions of living creatures, including vertebrates, invertebrates, microphytes, and macrophytes. Among those enormous resources, many invertebrates and macrophytes such as seaweeds have immense importance for human life as nutritious food, superfood, and medicinal food. Anthropogenic debris such as microplastics (MPs) in marine environments has been reported from the equator to the poles, and the quantity in the oceans is likely to increase due to plastic dumping and fragmentation of existing debris. MP contamination has been detected in seafood, and its severity may soon outweigh the health benefits we gain through those foods. Thus there is an urgent need to understand the properties, behavior, persistency, and possible lethal effects of MPs in marine biota and to safeguard our oceanic environments from this twenty-first-century pollutant. To encourage timely scientific dialogue on marine invertebrates, seaweeds, and MPs, this chapter offers a comprehensive summary of MP contamination in commercially important marine invertebrates such as mollusks, crustaceans, sea cucumbers, and sea urchins and marine macrophytes such as seaweeds.