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Microplastic ingestion in the black sea cucumber Holothuria leucospilota (Brandt, 1835) collected from Rambut Island, Seribu Islands, Jakarta, Indonesia
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Scientists found microplastics inside sea cucumbers collected from Indonesian coastal waters near Jakarta, with plastic particles concentrated in the intestines. Sea cucumbers are sediment-feeding bottom dwellers, making them useful indicators of microplastic contamination on the seafloor.
Abstract The research on microplastic ingestion in the black sea cucumber Holothuria leucospilota (Brandt, 1835) collected from Rambut Island, Kepulauan Seribu, DKI Jakarta aims to determine the amount and types of microplastic in sea cucumbers, acknowledge the organ or component of the sea cucumber with the highest amoung of microplastic particles, and know the correlation between the amount of microplastics found in the sediment ingested and intestines of the sea cucumber. Samples of sea cucumbers were collected from 3 different sites, which were the west, east, and south region of Rambut Island. The sampling technique used in this study was the purposive random sampling menthod. The analysis of microplastic amount and types was done by isolating microplastics in each sample. The sea cucumber’s respiratory tree and intestine was dissolved in 65% HNO3, solution, whereas separation by size and density by immersion in saturated NaCl solution was performed on the consumed sediment samples. The respiratory tree contained the most amount of film, i.e. 4.7 particles/g. Fibre were dominant in the intestine and the consumed sediment, i.e. 2.34 and 1.4 particles/g respectively. There was a positive correlation between the amount of microplastic in the sediment ingested and intestines of the sea cucumber.
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