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Impacts Of Plastic Pollution On A Pelagic Marine Mammal, The Northern Elephant Seal, Lauren M. Kashiwabara
Impacts Of Plastic Pollution On A Pelagic Marine Mammal, The Northern Elephant Seal, Lauren M. Kashiwabara
University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations
As plastic pollution increases, top marine predators such as marine mammals are becoming increasingly susceptible to plastic particles and their additives. Plastic particles have been found in gastrointestinal tracts and scat of many marine mammals, and quantifying plastic pollution in those that are pelagic can provide insight into plastic pollution in mesopelagic ecosystems that are just beginning to be analyzed. Adapting well-developed laboratory techniques for microplastic (MP) isolation (i.e. density separation and chemical digestion), I isolated MPs from the scat of the deepest diving pinniped, the northern elephant seal (NES), and found that100% of scat samples (n=11) contained high counts …