Probably pseudoscience combined with alarmism and hysteria provided through courtesy of Stanford University!
As the title of the paper clearly says its "exposure risk" not actual consumption!!!
Again who publishes this shoddy science? Nature journal!
That krill eats the microplastics first is already a very strong assumption!
The researchers associate the concentration of microplastics in subsurface ocean water with logs of whale movements. This is highly indirect! No direct evidence is provided!
This research does not mention any evidence of the negativ impact of eating microplastics. It is simply presumed or insinuated!
So we know that animals are eating plastics for 50 years now. So how bad is it actually?
Shame on the scientists who participate in this alarmism and hysteria with pseudoscience!
Plastophobia is a serious disorder, please consult with a doctor ASAP!
"... Published in Nature Communications, the study focuses on blue, fin, and humpback whales and their consumption of plastic fragments no bigger than a few grains of sand, which are commonly called microplastics. The authors combined measures of microplastic concentrations up and down the water column off the coast of California with detailed logs of where hundreds of whales carrying tracking devices foraged for food between 2010 and 2019.
They found the whales predominantly feed 50 to 250 meters below the surface, a depth that coincides with the highest concentrations of microplastic in the open ocean. The planet’s biggest creature – the blue whale – ingests the most plastic, at an estimated 10 million pieces per day as it feeds almost exclusively on shrimplike animals called krill. ...
There’s only one link: The krill eat the plastic, and then the whale eats the krill,” ...
They found the whales predominantly feed 50 to 250 meters below the surface, a depth that coincides with the highest concentrations of microplastic in the open ocean. The planet’s biggest creature – the blue whale – ingests the most plastic, at an estimated 10 million pieces per day as it feeds almost exclusively on shrimplike animals called krill. ...
There’s only one link: The krill eat the plastic, and then the whale eats the krill,” ...
Humpback whales subsisting primarily on fish such as herring and anchovies ingest an estimated 200,000 pieces of microplastic per day, while those eating mostly krill ingest at least 1 million pieces. Fin whales, which feed on both krill and fish, ingest an estimated 3 million to 10 million microplastic pieces per day. ...
This is the first time the group’s rare trove of detailed information about whales’ lives and biology has been connected to plastic pollution, a rapidly proliferating problem that adds to threats from noise, chemical, and biological pollution. “For species struggling to recover from historical whaling alongside other anthropogenic pressures, our findings suggest that the cumulative impacts of multiple stressors require further attention,” the authors write.
Whales are hardly alone in their consumption of plastic, which was first reported in marine food webs 50 years ago and has now been found in at least 1,000 species. ..."
From the abstract:
"Microparticles, such as microplastics and microfibers, are ubiquitous in marine food webs [???]. Filter-feeding megafauna may be at extreme risk of exposure to microplastics, but neither the amount nor pathway of microplastic ingestion are well understood. Here, we combine depth-integrated microplastic data from the California Current Ecosystem with high-resolution foraging measurements from 191 tag deployments on blue, fin, and humpback whales to quantify plastic ingestion rates and routes of exposure. We find that baleen whales predominantly feed at depths of 50–250 m, coinciding with the highest measured microplastic concentrations in the pelagic ecosystem. Nearly all (99%) microplastic ingestion is predicted to occur via trophic transfer. We predict that fish-feeding whales are less exposed to microplastic ingestion than krill-feeding whales. Per day, a krill-obligate blue whale may ingest 10 million pieces of microplastic, while a fish-feeding humpback whale likely ingests 200,000 pieces of microplastic. For species struggling to recover from historical whaling alongside other anthropogenic pressures, our findings suggest that the cumulative impacts of multiple stressors require further attention."
How much microplastic do whales eat? Up to 10 million pieces per day, Stanford research finds Analysis of ocean plastic pollution and whale foraging behavior tracked with noninvasive tags shows whales are ingesting tiny specks of plastic in far bigger quantities than previously thought, and nearly all of it comes from the animals they eat – not the water they gulp.
Fig. 1: Depth of rorqual whale foraging in relation to microplastic in the water column
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