The Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary stretches from Cambria up to Marin. It’s home to several species of marine mammals, giant kelp forests, tide pools… and plastic. To find out more about the plastic waste that makes its way into the ecosystem, sanctuary staff and volunteers are sampling the environment in a two-year study.
One sunny morning at Salinas River State Beach, about five volunteers watch Chad King sift sand through a metal sieve.
King is a research ecologist with the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. He’s teaching the volunteers how to sample for microplastics. These are particles smaller than five millimeters — about the size of a pencil eraser. Microplastics have become a topic of concern over the last few years.
“We did do a study back in 2019, 2020 and 2021 that looked at microplastics on the ocean surface at various locations within the sanctuary, near shore, in the bay and as far as 50 miles offshore,” said King. “And we found microplastics everywhere. Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute found microplastics in the water column down to 1000 meters. We know that they're there, but we don't know where all the plastics are coming from.”
To answer that question, the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary began a two-year project, funded by a state grant, that will sample rivers, nearby beaches, ocean water and marine life for microplastics.
“So the hope is to identify the quantity, the source and the types,” said King. “And hopefully that will influence maybe local regulations and cut down on the amount of plastics going into the sanctuary.”
After the demonstration, volunteers split into groups and spread out across the beach. They sample along lines parallel to the ocean.
The process involves filtering seawater, sifting sand, and carefully rinsing contents from a metal sieve into a glass jar. The volunteers do it twice in each spot: Once for particles between one and five millimeters that are visible to the naked eye. And once for particles between half a millimeter and 50 microns, which require a microscope. The smaller samples will be analyzed chemically using a process called FTIR.
“Then we can look at a library of what plastics use those chemicals then perhaps go, ‘oh, these plastics came from single use plastics, or these plastics came from agriculture or these plastics came from styrofoam containers, cigarette butts, whatever it may be,'” said King.
Different groups of volunteers will sample beaches near four rivers quarterly for two years. The volunteers today are a mix of college students and retirees.
Valeria Silva is there after taking a class at Cal State Monterey Bay taught by a sanctuary ecologist. She says a class project about fast fashion and its impacts on the ocean got her interested in microplastics.
“Every time we wash our clothes in the laundry, we're introducing microplastics into the environment,” said Silva.
She says filters on washing machines can help a bit.
“You can control at least your contribution to the issue, but it's just one little fraction of the problem. At the end of the day, we have to introduce legislation for big companies,” said Silva.
The microplastics problem is not unique to Monterey Bay.
Myra Finkelstein is an adjunct professor in the microbiology and toxicology department at the University of California Santa Cruz. She says microplastics are everywhere,
“We're breathing it, we're eating it, we're drinking it,” she said.
Scientists are still learning how they affect our ecosystems and our bodies.
“We're finding evidence that it causes inflammation and things like that in the digestive tract or in your lung tissue,” she said. “Some of the work that I've done has demonstrated that some of these microplastics that are so small you basically need to look at them under a microscope to sort of understand what they are, that they're still basically able to leach out toxic chemicals that can then disrupt hormone function.”
But Finkelstein remains hopeful that society can change.
“Some of the legislation in California to reduce single use plastic is a good start. I think we need to be better about what we're using and how we're putting it into the environment,” she said. “We have the intellectual ability to solve this problem. I really believe we do. I just feel like we have to have the motivation to try.”
The research in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary could help catalyze that change. The scientists are just starting to analyze their first samples. Soon, we’ll know more about how much plastic is in Monterey Bay, and where it’s coming from.
For more information or to get involved as a volunteer, contact Chad King at chad.king@noaa.gov
