Minggang Cai, Haixia He, Mengyang Liu, Siwei Li, Guowen Tang, Weimin Wang, Peng Huang,
Ge Wei, Yan Lin, Bin Chen, Jiahui Hu, Zhengnan Cen,

Lost but can’t be neglected: Huge quantities of small microplastics hide in the South China Sea,

Science of The Total Environment, Volume 633, 15
August 2018, Pages 1206-1216, ISSN 0048-9697,

Abstract:

Large quantities of microplastics with small particle sizes were found
in the South China Sea (SCS). The abundances of microplastics in
seawater were 0.045 ± 0.093and 2569 ± 1770 particles/m3 according to the
bongo net and pumping sampling methods, respectively. Smaller-size
fractions (size < 0.3 mm) contributed 92% of the number of microplastics
to the total load. Continental slope is the largest reservoir of
microplastics with an inventory of 295 tons. 21 polymer types were found
in the samples using the micro Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
(FTIR), among which alkyds (22.5%) and polycaprolactone (PCL) (20.9%)
accounted for almost half of the total polymer content. Lighter plastics
would not only concentrate upon the coastal area, being more likely to
drift further into open seas with ocean currents. The distribution
characteristics showed that it was mainly controlled by terrestrial
input of the Pearl River. This study, as the first report from SCS on
microplastics in water for its distribution and influence factors,
provided impetus for further research on the transportation fate and the
behavior of this emerging pollutant from coastal zone to the open
oceans.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Optkv-LRAILdqPJ48-dE9f_mHc4TXMhL
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.03.197.(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969718309562)