Plastic ingestion by Pacific Sand Lance (Ammodytes personatus) in the Salish Sea.
Presentation Abstract
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.
Session Title
Plastic in the Salish Sea
Conference Track
Fate and Effects of Pollutants
Conference Name
Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference (2016 : Vancouver, B.C.)
Document Type
Event
Location
2016SSEC
Type of Presentation
Oral
Genre/Form
presentations (communicative events)
Contributing Repository
Digital content made available by University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Subjects – Topical (LCSH)
Microplastics--Environmental testing--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.); Pacific sand lance--Effect of contaminated sediments on--Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)
Geographic Coverage
Salish Sea (B.C. and Wash.)
Rights
This resource is displayed for educational purposes only and may be subject to U.S. and international copyright laws. For more information about rights or obtaining copies of this resource, please contact University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225-9103, USA (360-650-7534; heritage.resources@wwu.edu) and refer to the collection name and identifier. Any materials cited must be attributed to the Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference Records, University Archives, Heritage Resources, Western Libraries, Western Washington University.
Type
Text
Language
English
Format
application/pdf
Plastic ingestion by Pacific Sand Lance (Ammodytes personatus) in the Salish Sea.
2016SSEC
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.
