Microplastics in Sumba waters, East Nusa Tenggara

Abstract

Abstract. The accumulation of plastic debris in the oceans has been widely recognized as a threat to marine environment. A recent study estimated that Indonesia is one of the biggest sources of plastic wastes in the ocean, but directly-measured abundance data from the seawater in Indonesia is lacking. We documented the abundance and distribution of microplastics (size <5mm) in sub-surface seawaters of Sumba, a pristine region in Indonesia. Water samples were collected from 5 m, 50 m, 100 m, 300 m depth and near the sea bottom. Samples were examined for microplastics using flotation and filtration methods. We found microplastic in all sampling locations, consisting of fibers (45.45%), granules (36.36%) and other plastic form (18.18%). Most of microplastic particles were found at water depths less than 100 m (81.82%), which was the thermocline area. Our finding corroborates the believe that plastics has widely invaded marine environment in different parts of the seas and oceans, including pristine, remote, and unknown areas.

The Presence of Microplastics in Water, Sediment, and Milkfish (Chanos chanos) at the Downstream Area of Citarum River, Indonesia

“…As a comparison, the most common microplastics polymers found in Sumba, East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia, were also polyethylene (63.64%) and polypropylene (22.73%) (Cordova and Hernawan 2018), similar to this study. The spectrum of FTIR is presented in Fig.…”

Plastic Pollution Research in Indonesia: State of Science and Future Research Directions to Reduce Impacts

“…Again, these differences are caused by the methods that are utilized for each environmental compartment: volumetric samples are mostly taken in the water column (e.g. Cordova and Hernawan, 2018), tissue samples are taken from biota (e.g. Rahmawati and Patria, 2019), and samples based on area and/or depth are taken from riverbanks, beaches, and from sediment at the bottom of the waterbody (e.g.…”

Elucidating the vertical transport of microplastics in the water column: A review of sampling methodologies and distributions

“…By categorizing by sampling methodology, these studies were generally divided into bulkwater sampling (Bagaev et al, 2017;Bagaev et al, 2018;Cordova et al, 2018;Dai et al, 2018;Di Mauro et al, 2017;Ding et al, 2019;Kanhai et al, 2018;Peng et al, 2018), net sampling (Lattin et al, 2004;Lenaker et al, 2019;) and submersible pumps/in-situ sampling (Choy et al, 2019;Liu et al, 2019;Song et al, 2018;Zobkov et al, 2019) (Fig. 1).…”