Microplastic pollution on Gran Canaria island beaches

Abstract

In recent decades, plastic pollution in the ocean has increased exponentially. With an estimation of more 270 thousand tons of plastics floating in the marine environment where they tend to migrate to the oceanic margins, accumulating in convective zones. The Canary Islands, located on the eastern margin of the Atlantic Ocean, are an obstacle to the Canary Current. There, it is of great interest to study the amount and type of plastic that migrates around the archipelago, as well as the proportion of plastic that washes up on the coast. This study of microplastic pollution on Canary Island beaches is a starting point for seasonal monitoring of plastic waste and future research that will aim to explain the consequences that this marine litter can have on marine ecosystems. The majority of the items observed were fragments from bigger plastic objects, more of the 50% of the items sampled. The transparent resin pellets or nurdles, semispherical items used as raw material in the productionof plastics, were found on most beachesand comprised14% of the total microplasticpollution. This was unexpected because the Canary Islands do not have a plastics industry, so this marine debris was rafted to the islands viaocean circulation. In addition, microfibers were also found, averaginga maximum concentration of 2000 items/m2. The distribution of microfiberswastotally different from that of the larger microplastics and mesoplastics, suggesting a possible endogenous origin of the contamination, probably by wastewater discharges, ravines and beach users.