Two forage fishes as potential conduits for the vertical transfer of microfibres in Northeastern Pacific Ocean food webs

We assessed the potential role played by two vital Northeastern Pacific Ocean forage fishes, the Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes personatus) and Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), as conduits for the vertical transfer of microfibres in food webs. We quantified the number of microfibres found in the st...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental pollution (1987) 2018-08, Vol.239, p.215-222
Main Authors: Hipfner, J. Mark, Galbraith, Moira, Tucker, Strahan, Studholme, Katharine R., Domalik, Alice D., Pearson, Scott F., Good, Thomas P., Ross, Peter S., Hodum, Peter
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Food webs
Forage fishes
Microfibre pollution
North Pacific Ocean
Seabirds
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Summary:We assessed the potential role played by two vital Northeastern Pacific Ocean forage fishes, the Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes personatus) and Pacific herring (Clupea pallasii), as conduits for the vertical transfer of microfibres in food webs. We quantified the number of microfibres found in the stomachs of 734 sand lance and 205 herring that had been captured by an abundant seabird, the rhinoceros auklet (Cerorhinca monocerata). Sampling took place on six widely-dispersed breeding colonies in British Columbia, Canada, and Washington State, USA, over one to eight years. The North Pacific Ocean is a global hotspot for pollution, yet few sand lance (1.5%) or herring (2.0%) had ingested microfibres. In addition, there was no systematic relationship between the prevalence of microplastics in the fish stomachs vs. in waters around three of our study colonies (measured in an earlier study). Sampling at a single site (Protection Island, WA) in a single year (2016) yielded most (sand lance) or all (herring) of the microfibres recovered over the 30 colony-years of sampling involved in this study, yet no microfibres had been recovered there, in either species, in the previous year. We thus found no evidence that sand lance and herring currently act as major food-web conduits for microfibres along British Columbia's outer coast, nor that the local at-sea density of plastic necessarily determines how much plastic enters marine food webs via zooplanktivores. Extensive urban development around the Salish Sea probably explains the elevated microfibre loads in fishes collected on Protection Island, but we cannot account for the between-year variation. Nonetheless, the existence of such marked interannual variation indicates the importance of measuring year-to-year variation in microfibre pollution both at sea and in marine biota. [Display omitted] •Two forage fishes were collected from seabirds on 6 North Pacific colonies in 1–8 years.•Overall, just 1.5% of 734 sand lance and 2.0% of 205 herring had ingested plastic.•Contrary to predicton, at-sea density of plastic and ingestion frequency were unrelated.•Plastic loads were highest in the Salish Sea, which is surrounded by urban development.•The between-year variation in plastic loads was considerable, but only at that site. Two important forage fish do not at present appear to act as primary conduits for the vertical transfer of microfibres in Northeastern Pacific Ocean food webs.
ISSN:0269-7491
1873-6424
DOI:10.1016/j.envpol.2018.04.009