A walrus is seen in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea in June of 2010. Research by a University of Alaska Fairbanks student found microplastics, mostly tiny fibers, were lodged in muscle tissue, blubber and livers of walruses harvested by hunters from St. Lawrence Island and Wainwright.
Blade’s research shows that the plastic bits, far too small to be seen with the naked eye, are somehow getting beyond stomachs and digestive tracts and lodging directly into body tissues – a process that scientists call translocation. Although his work is the first to make such a finding in Pacific walruses, emerging research elsewhere is turning up microplastics in body tissues of other marine mammals.
“They’re digging through ocean sediment. And prior studies have shown that microplastics in the Bering Strait region are settling into the sediments of that area, as well as being taken up by organisms like mussels, crustaceans, invertebrates that walruses are eating directly,” he said. Merrill, in a presentation at the symposium, described his findings about tissues from 22 marine mammals of 12 species.
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