Mission Tara Microplastics: a holistic set of protocols and data resources for the field investigation of plastic pollution along the land-sea continuum in Europe

Abstract

The Tara Microplastics mission was conducted for 7 months to investigate plastic pollution along nine major rivers in Europe—Thames, Elbe, Rhine, Seine, Loire, Garonne, Ebro, Rhone, and Tiber. An extensive suite of sampling protocols was applied at four to five sites on each river along a salinity gradient from the sea and the outer estuary to downstream and upstream of the first heavily populated city. Biophysicochemical parameters including salinity, temperature, irradiance, particulate matter, large and small microplastics (MPs) concentration and composition, prokaryote and microeukaryote richness, and diversity on MPs and in the surrounding waters were routinely measured onboard the French research vessel Tara or from a semi-rigid boat in shallow waters. In addition, macroplastic and microplastic concentrations and composition were determined on river banks and beaches. Finally, cages containing either pristine pieces of plastics in the form of films or granules, and others containing mussels were immersed at each sampling site, 1 month prior to sampling in order to study the metabolic activity of the plastisphere by meta-OMICS and to run toxicity tests and pollutants analyses. Here, we fully described the holistic set of protocols designed for the Mission Tara Microplastics and promoted standard procedures to achieve its ambitious goals: (1) compare traits of plastic pollution among European rivers, (2) provide a baseline of the state of plastic pollution in the Anthropocene, (3) predict their evolution in the frame of the current European initiatives, (4) shed light on the toxicological effects of plastic on aquatic life, (5) model the transport of microplastics from land towards the sea, and (6) investigate the potential impact of pathogen or invasive species rafting on drifting plastics from the land to the sea through riverine systems.

Comparison of the macro-, meso- and microplastic pollution in French riverbanks and beaches using citizen science with schoolchildren

“…FTIR analyses were performed with following parameters: 32 scans, 4 of resolution and large scale from 4000 to 600 cm − 1 . Polymer identi cation was performed using the POSEIDON tool that contains a spectra bank obtained from microplastics collected during the Tara Mediterranean (2014) and Tara Microplastic (2019) expeditions (Ghiglione et al, 2023;Kedzierski et al, 2019).…”

“…1). Schoolchildren have used the same scienti c protocol as developed during the Tara Microplastic expedition, adapted from the OSPAR protocol (Ghiglione et al, 2023). We ended up with 43,571 macro-and mesoplastic items that were characterized together with 12,415 microplastics for analysis by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR).…”