- Microplastics -- Environmental aspects,
- Microplastics -- Measurement,
- Microplastics -- Oregon -- Analysis
Commercial fisheries yield essential foods, sustain cultural practices, and provide widespread employment around the globe. Commercially harvested species face a myriad of anthropogenic threats including degraded habitats, changing climate, overharvest, and pollution. Microplastics are pollutants of increasing concern, which are pervasive in the environment and can harbor or adsorb pollutants from surrounding waters. Aquatic organisms, including commercial species, encounter and ingest microplastics, but there is a paucity of data about those caught and cultured in North America. Additional research is needed to determine prevalence, physiological effects, and population-level implications of microplastics in commercial species from Canada, the United States, and Mexico. Investigations into possible human health effects of microplastic exposure from seafood are also greatly needed. This synthesis summarizes current knowledge, identifies data gaps, and provides future research directions for addressing microplastics effects in commercially valuable North American fishery species.
© 2019 The Authors. Limnology and Oceanography published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography.
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Video & Photos Video on Microplastics in Razor Clams and Oysters is available here: https://youtu.be/WpmZbkWGayA
Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/oregonseagrant/sets/72157685405628133/
Microplastic Concentrations in Two Oregon Bivalve Species: Spatial, Temporal, and Species Variability
Data From: Microplastic Concentrations in Two Oregon Bivalve Species: Spatial, Temporal, and Species Variability