Describing Microplastics in the Seagrass Beds of South Florida

The mass production of plastics which began in the 1950's with 2 million tonnes per year, has increased nearly 200-fold to 381 million tonnes in 2015. Because of their durability, persistence, increasing production, and low rates of recovery, most of the 8.3 billion tonnes of plastics produced globally over the past 65 years, still exist today. The resulting accumulation of plastic debris has been of global concern for decades. More recently, concern over the harmful impacts of contamination by small plastic fragment has emerged as a global environmental issue. A growing body of work from researchers around the globe have shown that small plastic fragments, known as microplastics (< 5mm), are ubiquitous in the biosphere. The impact that microplastics may have on marine life has not been heavily researched, and there is a strong connection between marine life and seagrass beds, an important ecosystem for marine life. A study on the abundance of microplastics in seagrass beds in Florida has not been done yet, to our knowledge. Samples were collected using a piston corer in various locations around South Florida and then brought back to Minnesota for further testing. Following the methods of Besley et al. 2016, microplastics were separated and extracted from sand samples using density separation with a NaCl and deionized water solution followed by vacuum microfiltration. Filters were visually inspected using a stereoscope and all microplastics were photographed and their area measured using NIH ImageJ software. The composition of microplastics will be identified using Raman laser spectroscopy. By consistently employing the same methodology to describe microplastics in sand and soil samples from around the world, it is our hope that this study will provide a more reliable means to compare microplastics at a global scale.