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Plastic ingestion by Pacific Sand Lance (Ammodytes personatus) in the Salish Sea.
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This study found that 85% of Pacific Sand Lance fish sampled in a critical seabird habitat in the Salish Sea contained microplastics in their guts, with colored fibers being the most common type. The findings raise concerns about microplastic contamination moving through the marine food web in this ecologically important area.
We report on micro-plastic concentrations in the guts of Pacific Sand Lance (Ammodytes personatus) which were captured in an internationally important bird area (IBA) within the Salish Sea, Canada. We collected fish (65mm - 117mm) which were buried in the subtidal habitats in the Sidney Channel IBA during 2013-2015. Eighty five percent (17/20) of the fish contained coloured (black, red & blue) plastic filaments which ranged in length from 0.59 mm to >10mm with an average of 2.14 mm (subsample n = 38 pieces). Individual fish with plastics had between 1 and 63 pieces in their guts for a grand total of 211 filaments. The fish fed primarily on copepods and cirrepeds which ranged in size from 0.3mm – 3.8mm. The diet composition includes the same breadth of taxa as regional historical sand lance samples (1966 -1968) but only the recent samples contained plastic fragments. Recent broad scale sampling of microplastics on the BC coast (Desforges et al. 2014) shows large concentrations of plastic filaments (2877/m3) in the surface waters near our study site, with most pieces within the size class 0.1mm - 0.5mm (42%) and roughly equal representation of size fractions 0.5mm - 1mm (27%) and pieces >1mm (31%). We suspect that a key source of the plastic filaments in the forage fish is the Saanich Peninsula Wastewater treatment outflow which empties into our study area from a large urban area. It is likely that the Pacific Sand Lance mistake the plastics for zooplankton prey and ingest them directly from the water. The high densities of plastic in the guts of a key forage fish in an Important Bird Area indicates the large potential for transfer of microplastics into the food web to upper trophic levels.
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Extent of microplastics in Pacific Sand Lance burying habitat in the Salish Sea
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This study assessed microplastic concentrations in sandy habitat used by Pacific sand lance in the Salish Sea, finding widespread contamination. Sand lance are a key forage fish species, and microplastic contamination in their habitat raises concerns about effects on the broader coastal food web including marine mammals and seabirds.
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Researchers surveyed microplastic abundance in beach sediments at Pacific sand lance spawning, non-spawning, and non-sampled beaches on eastern Vancouver Island, British Columbia. They found microplastics present across all beach types, raising concern about potential exposure of sand lance eggs to plastic contamination in the beach sediments where they are deposited. The study provides the first data on microplastic prevalence at sand lance spawning habitat on the Pacific coast of Canada.
The presence of microplastics in juvenile Chinook salmon and their nearshore environments
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This study documented microplastic ingestion in juvenile Chinook salmon and their forage fish in the Salish Sea, finding plastic particles across multiple species and providing early evidence of microplastic contamination entering Pacific salmon food webs. The findings highlight the potential for microplastics to affect commercially and ecologically important fish species.
Microplastic in the Food of Small Sandeel Ammodytes tobianus from the Littoral of the Curonian Spit of the Baltic Sea
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This study examined microplastic occurrence in the small sandeel Ammodytes tobianus, a key forage fish in marine food webs, finding plastic particles in their digestive systems. Because sandeels are eaten by larger fish, seabirds, and marine mammals, their contamination has cascading implications for broader food chain microplastic transfer.
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Researchers examined microfibre ingestion in Pacific sand lance and Pacific herring collected by rhinoceros auklets across six colonies in British Columbia and Washington, finding very low prevalence (1.5% and 2.0% respectively) with no systematic relationship to local at-sea microplastic concentrations. A spike in contamination at one site in one year accounted for the majority of all microfibres recovered across 30 colony-years of sampling.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.