PROJECT HIGHLIGHT
This project leverages specimen collections at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to develop a comprehensive understanding of microplastic pollution in California and how it has varied across both space and time. This study will be the first of its kind in the Pacific and will establish a baseline for informing existing and future management decisions in California.
PROJECT SUMMARY
Microplastics are a pervasive problem for the world's oceans, but most studies focus on their impact on a single species or, at best, a single site. Changes in microplastic pollution over time are little documented. This leaves us without a clear picture of the scope of the problem.
This project examines microplastic consumption in California marine fishes from the 1940s to the present using preserved museum specimens from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHMLA), supplemented by specimens from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Occidental College. The study focuses on six ecologically distinct species in both Southern and Northern California, with initial work concentrated on Southern California populations.
Early findings are revealing a historical pattern. While plastics have been in large-scale production since post-WWII, these early plastics don't appear in the sampled coastal food webs. However, microplastics have been consistently present in Southern California fishes since the late 1960s, indicating a long, pervasive history of marine pollution along the coast. One notable discovery involves the Northern Lampfish, a species that migrates through the water column. The presence of plastics in this species suggests microplastics are being transported into deep sea food webs, not merely remaining in coastal waters.
As work progresses to include Northern California samples, this study will provide a comprehensive picture of how microplastics impact coastal food webs throughout California. The resulting data will help reveal which species consume microplastics and to what degree; how microplastic ingestion varies geographically; which types of plastics are consumed; and how these factors have changed over time. This will be the first temporal microplastic study in the Pacific Ocean, creating a much-needed baseline dataset for future studies and management decisions.