Presence of microplastic in target species of small scale fisheries and possible social implications on the local communities

Abstract Microplastic ingestion by marine fishes has been of particular interest, as many species are the target of commercial fisheries and, thus, have a strong connection with human health. Consumption of microplastic thru seafood is likely to have harmful effects on people globally but mainly on social groups that highly depend on fisheries for self-consumption. Here we first aim to characterize the presence of microplastics in species targeted by small-scale fishers; and explore if the fish consumption of microplastic particles is associated with biological factors, second, we applied semi-structured interviews to small-scale fishers to approach, from a socio-environmental perspective, the potential social and environmental impacts of contamination by microplastics on the local communities. We found that important commercial fish families were polluted, and the consumption of microplastics by fish caught trough traditional fishing gear depends on traits such as species mobility. Species with a wide home range had a higher load of MPs than fish with a small home range but also seemed to be related to the fishing method. The observed differences in microplastic content on target species are likely to be transferred to the human dimension in a non-random fashion. This work implies that microplastic pollution in commercial fish might represent an environmental and social issue that is not well-conceived by the fishers mainly but also for multiple actors that make use of marine resources.