Microplastics Recovered from Galveston Bay Oysters: Trends in Recorded Measurements
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Abstract
Filter feeders in marine ecosystems are vulnerable to pollutants on a microscopic level which has presented a growing concern for the unknown health risks, as species exposed to ubiquitous plastic particulate are commonly sold for human consumption. The parameters of such species’ intake of microscopic plastic debris has been the subject of research due to these potential risks. For the purposes of this study, the biomass of an oyster was hypothesized to show a positive linear relationship with the size of plastic debris found in its tissue. The plastics in this instance were microplastics, measuring between 0.1µm and 5mm. This study presents the analysis of size distributions of microplastics recovered from chemically digested oyster tissues in comparison to the recorded tissue weight of oysters that fell within the same size range of oysters commonly available for consumption. The null hypothesis would then indicate that the biomass of the market-sized oysters cannot be used to predict the size of the microplastics they intake. To test the hypothesis, isolated tissues from Crassostrea virginica collected from oyster reefs in the sub-bays of the greater Galveston Bay estuary underwent KOH digestion protocol to extract identifiable microplastics from bivalve tissues. The image analysis of recovered microplastic data helped to consolidate the range in size variability of the microplastic content against the range in oyster tissue weight. Using regression to analyze microplastic size (mean, median, minimum, and maximum) by oyster tissue mass, no definitive correlation was found between the response and predictor variables. These findings supported the null hypothesis, suggesting that the biomass of the market-sized oysters cannot be used to predict the size of the microplastics they retain in their tissues.
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Microplastics, Oysters