Microplastic assessment in Seagrass ecosystem at Kodingareng Lompo Island of Makassar City

Abstract

Abstract Microplastic pollution is so widespread and rising a great concern all over the globe. The seagrass ecosystem is commonly known to play significant roles in biodiversity support. The occurrence of microplastics (MPs) in sediments, surface water, fish, and benthos collected from the seagrass ecosystem at Kodingareng Lompo island of Makassar City were observed. From 29 sediment samples collected the range of MPs abundance was 2.96-28.3 item.kg −1 dried sediment. Meanwhile, MPs abundance in surface water was 0.023 item.m −3 , exceptionally lower compared to the sediment value. Of 4 fish species observed, Siganus canaliculatus was the species with the highest number of ingested MPs. On the other hand, sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla ingested more MPs compared to other benthos species. There was no consistent MPs abundance in sediments found at present studies. Similarly, there were no statistically significant differences seen on MPs abundance within all components examined using non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis analysis. However, the presence of MPs in all components observed has clearly shown a wide dispersion of MPs contamination in the marine food web, as seagrass is a well-known productive ecosystem with high marine biodiversity assemblage in the tropical region.

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