Last Thursday Wendy and I went out to collect our day 40 samples! So far so good- we have collected at day 12, 24, and 40, with one more to go. Here we are, returning with the treasures. What we do is to place the small cages with the plastic in large ziplock bags filled with seawater until we get to shore. That orange bag in the kayak contains the samples.
But the real cool part is that we added scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to the study. Any paper looking at microbes attaching to microplastics will show some SEM pictures, and we decided it was a good investment. Interestingly, both Wendy and myself have worked with Malcolm Wood, the EM guru at Scripps Research Institute (Wendy much more than myself), and he agreed to run our samples. So we plopped plastic samples (and controls) in glutaraldehyde and Wendy raced down to San Diego with the tubes on ice, while I raced to the lab to freeze the other samples. And to incubate the plates, of course.
Here is the image of HDPE, showing a large diatom to the right, and a number of rods to the left.
We’ll be presenting our results at the ASM conference in New Orleans, in less than 2 weeks! Our poster session will be Sunday June 4, 12.15 pm, poster board # 2594.
Thanks for all your support! We could not have done it without you.References
- 1. Reisser, J., Shaw, J., Hallegraeff, G., Proietti, M., Barnes, D. K. A., Thums, M., … Pattiaratchi, C. (2014). Millimeter-Sized Marine Plastics: A New Pelagic Habitat for Microorganisms and Invertebrates. PLoS ONE, 9(6), e100289. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0100289
- 2. Carson, H. S., Nerheim, M. S., Carroll, K. A., & Eriksen, M. (2013). The plastic-associated microorganisms of the North Pacific Gyre. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 75(1-2), 126–132. doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2013.07.054
- 3. Zettler, E. R., Mincer, T. J., & Amaral-Zettler, L. A. (2013). Life in the “Plastisphere”: Microbial Communities on Plastic Marine Debris. Environmental Science & Technology, 130619162220002. doi:10.1021/es401288x
