Search results for " marine litter"
showing 3 items of 3 documents
First Assessment of Plasticizers in Marine Coastal Litter-Feeder Fauna in the Mediterranean Sea
2021
Micro and nanoplastics are harmful to marine life due to their high level of fragmentation and resistance to degradation. Over the past two decades, marine coastal sediment has shown an increasing amount of microplastics being a sort of trap for debris wastes or chemicals. In such an environment some species may be successful candidates to be used as monitors of environmental and health hazards and can be considered a mirror of threats of natural habitats. Such species play a key role in the food web of littoral systems since they are litter-feeders, and are prey for fishes or higher trophic level species. A preliminary investigation was conducted on five species of small-sized amphipod cru…
Turtles on the trash track: loggerhead turtles exposed to floating plastic in the Mediterranean Sea
2019
Loggerhead turtles (Caretta caretta) spend most of their life in large marine areas occupying a variety of habitats where they are exposed to different types of threats. Among these, marine litter is known to pose a risk of entanglement or ingestion. Areas of risk exposure can be identified where the species overlap with litter accumulations, but gathering data on this highly mobile species and marine litter, especially in high sea areas, is challenging. Here we analysed five years of sea turtle and marine litter data collected by a network of research bodies along fixed trans-border transects in the Mediterranean Sea. Ferries were used as observation platforms to gather systematic data on …
Cetacean presence and distribution in the central Mediterranean Sea and potential risks deriving from plastic pollution
2021
Abstract The Sardinian and Sicilian Channels are considered hotspots of biodiversity and key ecological passages between Mediterranean sub-basins, but with significant knowledge gaps about marine mammal presence and potential threats they face. Using data collected between 2013 and 2019 along fixed transects, inter and intra-annual cetacean index of abundance was assessed. Habitat suitability, seasonal hot spots, and risk exposure for plastic were performed using the Kernel analysis and the Biomod2 R-package. 661 sightings of 8 cetacean species were recorded, with bottlenose and striped dolphins as the most sighted species. The north-eastern pelagic sector, the coastal waters and areas near…