This past November when we sailed in the Beagle Channel through the Chilean Fjords we took water samples throughout the trip. We took samples for The Maine Environmental Institute’s (MERI) research in collaboration with Adventurers and Scientists for Conservation (ASC). They are leading a large local and international effort to collect samples of water to analyze the microplastic content – how much, what type, from where. Before the scientific community can even start to understand the effects of these microplastics, there needs to be a much better understanding of what’s even out there! That’s where we came in to help collect the water samples.
We just got the results of our six samples from Abby Barrows, the Coastal Monitoring and Outreach Coordinator at MERI:
Quijote
After receiving the 1L surface water samples from our adventurers, we filter the sample on gridded paper and allow it to dry. When the paper is dry we use a microscope to look for pieces of microplastic (>5mm). We count each piece of plastic and categorize it based on the shape and color.
The Quijote team collected 1L water samples at six different locations in [the Beagle Channel] for microplastic analysis. From those six liters we counted a total of 31 pieces of microplastics with an average of 5.17 pieces of microplastic per 1 liter sample. The plastic that we found was primarily filamentous (29 pieces/L) and primarily transparent/white (15 pieces/6L).
Currently, we have received 78 samples from ASC volunteers. We have filtered 55 samples and counted 28 of those samples. The counted samples have been from Alaska, Thailand, Belize, Mexico, Argentina and Panama. We have counted a total of 632 plastics from the 28 liters. The average number of plastics per one liter sample of water from our volunteers is 22.5.
The highest sample count was from the Belize Reef Ocean Acidification team. Their fifth sample contained micro and macro plastics and had a total of 299 pieces of microplastics for that one liter sample. The sample was taken at latitude: 17.282600, longitude: -87.811420.
Its quite interesting that the majority of the microplastic samples were white and filamentous. Its not correlated by Abby’s team, but we did find 2 large bags of trash made of a while filamentous material in Caleta Olla, where at the end of our trip we did a large trash clean up (see the photo and the 2 large white bags are in the middle of the boat!) We took 2 samples in this cove. If we found 2 of these bags, they probably were not the first and probably not the last of this type in this area – potentially from fishing boats which frequent this cove.
Its so exciting to get our data back and learn about what we collected.
For more info on their research you can check out their page about microplastics and how the data will be used.
One reply on “Microplastic Sampling Results!”
Great Job Laura and Fede and crew! Thanks for “going the extra mile” to contribute to this important research!