在海草中发现微塑料污染
所有的海洋食物链——其中许多通往我们自己的餐盘——现在都被塑料污染了
有塑料也要吃
带着你的信用卡
也要吃
All of the ocean’s food chains—many of them leading to our own dinner plates—are now contaminated by plastic
箭鱼是热带海洋中色彩鲜艳的食草动物，是伯利兹海岸附近加勒比海海域海洋生态系统的宝贵元素。这并不是因为成群的金碧辉煌的鹦嘴鱼为绿松石般的海水增添了旋转的彩虹色，尽管它们也这样做了。
相反，他们有更高的使命——在保护世界第二大堡礁系统的健康方面发挥重要作用。Insatiable plant eaters, parrotfish spend most of their lives munching on grasses, and most importantly for the health of the reefs, algae, which if left unchecked can strangle the life out of coral.
2017年秋天，Hayley Goss和Jacob Jaskiel在伯利兹西部热带温暖的浅海岸水域的水下草地上收集海草叶片。Goss和Jaskiel是波士顿大学的学生新濠影汇线上赌场研究人员，当他们穿上潜水装备潜入海底，剪断海草——一种被称为T. testudint的海草——在水下洋流的微风中摇摆时，他们并没有考虑海洋中的塑料污染。相反，他们想到的是沙拉酱。
“Parrotfish are vegetarian, so we were wondering if they prefer to eat their seagrass with salad dressing or not,” Goss says.
Salad dressing is a term that Goss and Jaskiel coined in collaboration with their faculty advisor, BU marine biologist Randi Rotjan, to describe the collection of small organisms that take up residence on the surfaces of seagrass. These organisms, called epibionts, encrust themselves on the grass blades and, the trio hypothesized, might have an influence on which blades the parrotfish choose to eat.
1. BU researchers scuba dive off the coast of Turneffe Atoll, Belize. 2. 和3。在伯利兹的特纳夫环礁海岸收集海草样本。图片：Jacob Jaskiel提供
Originally, Goss and Jaskiel were collecting seagrass blades with the intention that, back at Rotjan’s laboratory in Boston, they would count up the number and different kinds of epibionts—the “salad dressing”—on each blade.
“We brought back 16 different blades from different seagrass beds, and we thought all we were going to do was taxonomically characterize the organisms we found on them,” Jaskiel says. “此外，每个叶片上的鹦嘴鱼咬痕的数量将帮助我们量化哪些叶片最开胃。”
但事实并非如此。相反，当戈斯看到外星生物时，她在显微镜下观察了一个样本。
戈斯说：“我打开了观察镜，看到了一根非常细的鲜红色纤维。“我对雅各说，‘嘿，看看这个。’”
贾斯基尔看了看显微镜，自己也看了两遍。“我马上就看到了。”It was undeniably a fiber. 看起来是塑料制成的超细纤维。但是……如何?
看着他们第一次海草样本在显微镜下看到薄,鲜红的超细纤维戈斯和Jaskiel停在他们的踪迹。红色超细纤维的左边也可以看到黑色或灰色的超细纤维。照片:由Rotjan实验室
一个他们希望自己不必做出的发现
The island of Turneffe Atoll, home to seagrasses and the parrotfish that eat them, is well positioned as a research station because of its proximity to Belize City and the Belize Barrier Reef—the largest reef making up 80 percent of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which stretches over a total of 620 miles from the Yucatán Peninsula to Honduras.
在波士顿大学海洋科学专业的大四学生，戈斯和贾斯基尔前往特纳夫环礁为Rotjan的实验室做实地考察，这是他们大三秋季“海洋学期”的一部分。海洋学期是一个移动学习的机会，冉冉升起的海洋生物学家一边上课，一边做新濠影汇线上赌场研究，同时他们在世界上一些最重要的科学前哨基地轮流工作。
“Everybody is playing a role in plastic pollution whether they know it or not.”
波士顿大学文理学院生物学新濠影汇线上赌场研究助理教授Rotjan说：“这一切都是因为我想找学生在实验室里帮助分类浮游生物。”Her lab has various research interests but has taken a turn toward understanding differences in remote versus urban areas.
Rotjan是一个坚定的倡导者，通过让年轻科学家直接参与她的新濠影汇线上赌场研究，并鼓励他们提出新的假设和自己的新濠影汇线上赌场研究兴趣，来启动他们的职业生涯。When Goss and Jaskiel, students in her marine biology course, each jumped at the chance for hands-on research experience, Rotjan offered them both lab spots.
“We have a motto in the lab,” Rotjan says. “‘水涨船高’，这就是我们关于团队合作力量的理念。”她说，实验室成员也很喜欢双关语。“双关语确实推动了新濠影汇线上赌场研究……我们的科学家是一群海螺爱好者，高空明星。我们在一起很开心。”
Jokes aside, when they started out sorting plankton, Goss and Jaskiel, who knew each other as acquaintances from their marine biology classes, never imagined that in joining Rotjan’s lab, they would become co–first authors on a landmark study describing microplastic pollution in marine plants, a “first” for the scientific world.
Ironically, they say that it’s a finding they wish they didn’t have to make.
面对现实，一层一层
In Rotjan’s lab, freshly returned from their fieldwork in Belize, Goss and Jaskiel were in a state of shock as they stared into the microscope. What was a thin, red microplastic fiber doing in the middle of their seagrass sample?
旅途中的咖啡：高年级学生海莉·戈斯、兰迪·罗特詹教授和高年级学生雅各布·贾斯基尔在伯利兹特纳夫环礁附近的一艘船上开始了他们的早晨。图片：Hayley Goss提供
戈斯说：“起初，我们千方百计地寻找这不是真的。”“我们试图看看样本是否被污染了。”
但奇怪的是，红色微塑料纤维并没有完全粘在样品表面。它被表面生物嵌入并部分结壳。
“At that point, we knew these microplastics were not there because of any sample contamination,” Jaskiel says. “微塑料上生长着一层又一层的生物体。”
“Any residual hope that this was not true was squashed when we documented that epibionts had actually grown over the microfibers,” Goss says.
Rotjan将这种影响比作沉积学。她说附生生物生长层在层、沉积物和岩石一样层沉积在地球。就像我们可以判断对象的年龄根据岩层中发现,Rotjan,戈斯,Jaskiel确定塑料微粒纤维,杂草丛生的附生生物,已经有很长一段时间。
随着他们调查的样本越来越多，他们发现了更多相同的东西，除了红色微纤维；它是各种颜色、形状和大小的微塑料纤维，还有微小的塑料碎片，以及小得不可思议的塑料微珠。有很多很多的塑料碎片，来自各种各样的来源，缠在海草上。总的来说，戈斯和贾斯基尔发现，他们从特纳夫环礁收集的海草中有75%含有微塑料。
The findings, published in Marine Pollution Bulletin, reveal an entirely new vehicle for microplastics to travel into the food chain. 虽然已经有新濠影汇线上赌场研究表明，一些海洋生物自己会摄入塑料，并将这些塑料通过捕食者传递到食物链的上游，但直到现在，人们还不认为素食海洋生物可能是塑料进入食物链的一个点。
在查阅了所有相关的科学文献后，戈斯和贾斯基尔说，他们的工作是第一次在水生维管植物上发现微塑料。维管植物是指含有水、有特殊的叶、茎和根的植物。And, they believe, this is only the second discovery of microplastics on marine plant life anywhere in the world.
“我们偶然发现了一些以前没有人写过的东西，”Jaskiel说。
Microplastics, it appears, have taken up residence inside the lowest rungs of the ocean’s herbivore food chain, the tiny plants themselves that nourish sea-dwelling vegetarians like parrotfish. 这一认识给食物链上的每一个环节都带来了麻烦，人类的海鲜消费——包括鹦鹉鱼这样的物种——在过去的50年里翻了一番。
“这不是一个有趣、酷的发现；它描述了一种我们从未真正考虑过的人类影响，”高斯忧郁地说。“当然，话虽如此，最好现在就知道，并努力解决我们这个世界正在发生的事情。”
“每个人都在扮演一个角色”
Rotjan塑料微粒说他们发现在海草可能通过许多不同的认识途径到达塑料污染渗入海洋食物链。
塑料始于化石燃料行业，在那里，富含碳的原油被提炼成聚合物，这种聚合物可以被塑造成几乎任何形状或大小的形状。因为塑料不与其他物质发生化学反应,它永远不会完全降解。
罗特詹说，像一次性包装容器和道路轮胎这样的大块塑料碎片，会分解成越来越小的碎片，直到它们变成微塑料芯片。塑料微珠曾经在面部和身体去角质磨砂膏中很流行，但现在在美国被禁止在化妆品中使用。
And, Rotjan says, microplastics are literally woven into the clothes we wear. Garments made of synthetic materials like nylon, polyester, acrylic, and spandex (anything not made of pure cotton or wool, basically) contain hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of microplastic fibers. 为什么这很重要？Each and every time we do a load of laundry, tens of thousands of microplastics are drained out with the wash water. Plastic waste, flowing through our plumbing systems and too small to be filtered out by water treatment facilities, is introduced to waterways which, eventually, all lead to the ocean.
回到波士顿，贾斯基尔和戈斯沿着港口散步，偶尔捡起点缀在卡森海滩上的塑料碎片。他们现在认为，波士顿和其他沿海城市附近的海洋植物，如特纳夫环礁的海草，也可能面临微塑料污染的风险。Photo credit: Photo by Jackie Ricciardi
罗特詹说，如果你经常用洗衣机清洗非棉质或非羊毛的衣服，那就没有别的办法了。Over the course of our lives, we are contributing millions—perhaps billions—of microfibers to the world’s oceans.
Looking under the microscope, the team also got their answer about whether parrotfish prefer seagrasses with lots of “salad dressing” or not. When they counted up the number of parrotfish nibble marks on the seagrasses, the data suggests that the more layers of epibionts a seagrass contains, the more appetizing it is for parrotfish. Combined with their realization that the epibiont layers help enmesh microplastics, the trio says seagrasses with the most salad dressing—made up of epibionts and microplastics—are the most likely to be eaten by parrotfish. 当塑料微粒进入消化道的鹦嘴鱼吗?它们是被排出体外，还是被人体吸收？
“我们还有很多不知道的事情。The science of microplastics is just beginning,” Rotjan says.
如果Goss和Jaskiel的海草揭示了什么，那就是微塑料一直在寻找一种方式回到我们身边，通过生命的循环，通过回到吃海鲜的人的肚子里，把它们扔进海洋的物种。如此循环往复。塑料，曾经被誉为一种神奇的材料，现在是我们世界不可避免的一部分，延伸开来，是我们的一部分。
“这不是一个有趣、酷的发现；它描述了一种我们从未真正考虑过的人类影响。”
“寻找无塑料食品将是现代水产养殖面临的诸多挑战之一，”Rotjan说。“We need to do better than just pick our poison—although we’ve created a toxic world, we have the potential to fix it.”
If there is one bit of light to hold on to, it’s that Goss and Jaskiel’s experience in Rotjan’s lab has cemented their commitment to research.
“这是两颗科学明星，”Rotjan说。
在2019年5月毕业之前，他们已经有了一项突破性的科学发现，戈斯和贾斯基尔说，他们刚刚开始希望通过海洋新濠影汇线上赌场研究为世界做出贡献。
“问题是，每个人都在塑料污染中扮演着角色，不管他们是否意识到这一点，”贾斯基尔说。“它也会反过来影响到每个人。这令人羞愧，但这是非常真实的，除非我们解决这个问题，否则情况只会变得更糟。”
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