Plastic ingestion by pelagic and demersal fish from the North Sea and Baltic Sea

Micro-and macro-plastics in marine species from Nordic waters

“…In other studies, 13% of individuals from the North Sea contained plastics ranging from 0-2 particles per individual (Foekoema et al, 2013). The lowest recorded values were from an extensive study in the North Sea and Baltic Sea with only 1 Baltic Sea individual (1.4% of total) containing rubber in its stomach, and finally no individuals from a study in the North Sea had ingested plastics (Rummel et al, 2016). Number of ingested particles ranged from 0-4.…”

“…However, there are some published papers on findings within the water column (e.g. Talvitie et al, 2015;Gewert et al, 2017) as well as ingestion in biota such as seabirds (van Franeker, 1985;van Franeker et al, 2011), fish (Skóra et al, 2012;Foekema et al, 2013;Bråte et al, 2016;Rummel et al, 2016) and invertertes (Vandermeersch et al, 2015;Wójcik-Fudalewska et al, 2016). The current data ground is small, but there are several ongoing projects on plastics in Nordic waters which have a specific focus on plastic ingestion.…”

“…Mackerel have been studied from three locations in the Nordic marine environment; 30.8% of individuals from the Baltic Sea and 13.2% of individuals from the coastal North Sea were found to contain microplastics (Rummel et al, 2016). No plastics were found in mackerel from the offshore North Sea (n= 566, Foekoema et al, 2013) and a single horse mackerel from the North Sea contained one microplastic particle (n= 100, Foekoema et al, 2013).…”

“…Other demersal fish from the Nordic environment have also been investigated for plastics (Figure 16), and highest percentage ingestion was reported for dab from the coastal North Sea, 54% (n=75), although no individuals (n=98) were found to ingest plastics in the Baltic Sea (Rummel et al, 2016). Microplastics were also reported for 31% of whiting from Kattegat (n=46, Sørensen et al, 2013), 6.2% of haddock (n=97), a single whiting (1%) and a single flounder (10%) from the North Sea, although no plastics were found in gurnards or flounders from the same locations (Foekoema et al, 2013;Rummel et al, 2015).…”

“…In a study by Rummel et al (2016) from the North Sea and the Baltic Sea, 40% of the ingested polymer in fish was polyethylene. Comparatively, the most common microplastic polymers found in the water column of the Baltic Sea in 2017 were PP (53%) and PE (24%).…”