Litter ingestion and entanglement in green turtles: An analysis of two decades of stranding events in the NE Atlantic.

Autor: Rodríguez Y; Instituto de Investigação em Ciências do Mar - OKEANOS, Universidade dos Açores, 9900-138, HORTA, Portugal. Electronic address: rodriguez.g.yasmina@gmail.com., Vandeperre F; Instituto de Investigação em Ciências do Mar - OKEANOS, Universidade dos Açores, 9900-138, HORTA, Portugal., Santos MR; Direção de Serviços de Biodiversidade e Política do Mar, Direção Regional dos Assuntos do Mar, Secretaria Regional do Mar e das Pescas, Colónia Alemã, Apartado 9, 9900-014, Horta, Faial, Portugal., Herrera L; Instituto de Investigação em Ciências do Mar - OKEANOS, Universidade dos Açores, 9900-138, HORTA, Portugal., Parra H; Instituto de Investigação em Ciências do Mar - OKEANOS, Universidade dos Açores, 9900-138, HORTA, Portugal., Deshpande A; NOAA Fisheries, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, James J. Howard Marine Sciences Laboratory at Sandy Hook, NJ, USA., Bjorndal KA; Archie Carr Center for Sea Turtle Research and Department of Biology, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, 32611, USA., Pham CK; Instituto de Investigação em Ciências do Mar - OKEANOS, Universidade dos Açores, 9900-138, HORTA, Portugal.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Environmental pollution (Barking, Essex : 1987) [Environ Pollut] 2022 Apr 01; Vol. 298, pp. 118796. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Jan 10.
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2022.118796
Abstrakt: Survivorship of early life stages is key for the well-being of sea turtle populations, yet studies on animals that distribute around oceanic areas are very challenging. So far, the information on green turtles (Chelonia mydas) that use the open NE Atlantic as feeding grounds is scarce. Strandings occurring in oceanic archipelagos can provide relevant information about the biology, ecology and current anthropogenic pressures for megafauna inhabiting the open ocean. In this study, we analysed stranding events of green turtles found in the Azores archipelago to investigate interactions with marine litter. In addition, we quantified and characterized litter items stranded on beaches to provide a direct comparison between the ingested items with the debris found in the environment. A total of 21 juvenile green turtles were found stranded in the region between 2000 and 2020 (size range: 12-49 cm, CCL). Overall, 14% of the animals were entangled in marine litter and 86% of the turtles necropsied had ingested plastic. The mean abundance of items ingested was 27.86 ± 23.40 and 98% were white/transparent. Hard plastic fragments between 1 and 25 mm were the most common shape recovered in the turtles, similarly to what was found on the coastline. All of the litter items analysed with pyrolysis GC-MS revealed to be polyethylene (PE). This study provides the first baseline assessment of interactions of plastic litter with juvenile green turtles found at the east edge of the North Atlantic Subtropical Gyre. The combination of these results supports the hypothesis that migratory megafauna that use remote oceanic islands as a feeding ground are exposed to anthropogenic litter contamination dominated by plastics, even when these regions are located far away from big industrial centers or populated cities.
(Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
Externí odkaz: