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. 2024 Feb 17;14(4):641.
doi: 10.3390/ani14040641.

Microplastics Prevalence in Different Cetaceans Stranded along the Western Taiwan Strait

Reyilamu Aierken  1   2   3 , Yuke Zhang  1   2   3 , Qianhui Zeng  1   2   3 , Liming Yong  1   2   3 , Jincheng Qu  1   2   3 , Haoran Tong  4 , Xianyan Wang  1   2   3 , Liyuan Zhao  1   2   3
Affiliations

Microplastics Prevalence in Different Cetaceans Stranded along the Western Taiwan Strait

Reyilamu Aierken et al. Animals (Basel). .

Abstract

Microplastics (MPs) pollution is of global concern, which poses serious threats to various marine organisms, including many threatened apex predators. In this study, MPs were investigated from nine cetaceans of four different species, comprising one common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), two pygmy sperm whales (Kogia breviceps), one ginkgo-toothed beaked whale (Mesoplodon ginkgodens), and five Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) stranded along the western coast of the Taiwan Strait from the East China Sea based on Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy analysis. Mean abundances of 778 identified MPs items were 86.44 ± 12.22 items individual-1 and 0.43 ± 0.19 items g-1 wet weight of intestine contents, which were found predominantly to be transparent, fiber-shaped polyethylene terephthalate (PET) items usually between 0.5 and 5 mm. The abundance of MPs was found at a slightly higher level and significantly correlated with intestine contents mass (p = 0.0004*). The MPs source was mainly likely from synthetic fibers-laden sewage discharged from intense textile industries. Our report represents the first study of MPs in pelagic and deep-diving cetaceans in China, which not only adds baseline data on MPs for cetaceans in Asian waters but also highlights the further risk assessment of MPs consumption in these threatened species.

Keywords: East China Sea; Taiwan Strait; apex predators; cetacean; intestine; microplastics.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cetacean carcass recovery sites along the western coast of the Taiwan Strait.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The abundance distribution of MPs in each cetacean. The blue columns are the abundances of MPs calculated per individual in each cetacean, and the red columns are the abundances of MPs calculated per unit wet weight of intestine contents in each cetacean.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The correlation among MPs abundance, cetacean body size, and intestine contents mass. The pink squares represent the number of MPs correlated with the body length of each cetacean; the orange circles represent the number of MPs correlated with the intestine contents mass of each cetacean. The correlation curve is labeled with the dashed line (Spearman’s r = 0.95, p = 0.0004).
Figure 4
Figure 4
The percentages of MPs in total (a) and a comparison of MPs by shape (b), composition (c), color (d), and size (e) in different cetaceans. The numbers in (a) are the actual numbers of MPs belonging to different categorizations.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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