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Study finds high microplastic levels in Mediterranean fish despite low chemical contaminants – News-Medical.Net
In a recent study published in the journal Foods, researchers from Italy, Albania, and Montenegro conducted biomonitoring campaigns on fish and cephalopod species in the Mediterranean Sea to assess contamination levels of cadmium, microplastics, and antibiotics. They found negligible contamination by cadmium and antibiotics but high levels of microplastics in the stomach and gut of Sparus aurata (Gilt-head bream) and Dicentrarchus labrax (European seabass).
Study: The EU Interreg Project “ADRINET”: Assessment of Well-Known and Emerging Pollutants in Seafood and Their Potential Effects for Food Safety. Image Credit: Al Pidgen / Shutterstock
Background
The Mediterranean Sea, a biodiversity hotspot, faces significant pollution from various sources, including industrial and anthropogenic activities, with potential risks to marine ecosystems and human health. The Adriatic Network for Marine Ecosystem (ADRINET) project, spanning from 2018 to 2020, aimed to address these challenges by improving coastal management and preserving biodiversity in collaboration with Italian, Albanian, and Montenegrin partners. This initiative focused on three Mediterranean bays, analyzing fishing practices and pollution impacts. Biomonitoring campaigns targeted key fish and cephalopod species to assess contamination levels of cadmium, microplastics, and antibiotics. By delivering scientific methodologies and tools for environmental risk management, ADRINET aimed to promote a sustainable Blue Economy, enhance food safety, and safeguard marine ecosystems. Current scientific evaluations beyond the project’s duration aim to provide continued monitoring and harmonized results across research groups until 2023.
In the present study, researchers examined the presence of major environmental contaminants, including cadmium, antibiotics, and microplastics in commercial fish and cephalopod species to enhance environmental risk management and promote a sustainable Blue Economy.
About the study
From 2018 to 2020, sampling was conducted in three Mediterranean bays—Castro Bay (Italy), Vlora Bay (Albania), and Boka Kotorska Bay (Montenegro). Various marine species were included, such as Sparus aurata, Dicentrarchus labrax, Sepia spp., and Loligo spp. A total of 468 samples were collected for cadmium analysis, 260 for microplastics analysis, and 420 samples were collected for qualitative antibiotic analysis. Additionally, from 2021 to 2023, 100 samples of Sparus aurata and Dicentrarchus labrax were collected from each bay for further antibiotic evaluation using multi-residual analysis. Fishermen were trained to ensure consistent sample sizes.
Cadmium analysis was performed using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Microplastics were extracted using hydrogen peroxide treatment and filtration and viewed under a stereomicroscope. Multi-residual analysis of antibiotics in fish samples was undertaken using ultra-performance liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry.
Results and discussion
Cadmium levels were measured in Loligo spp. and Sepia spp. from three bays, with concentrations mostly below maximum levels (MLs) set by the European Union, except for glands in Castro Bay. The study highlights potential cadmium contamination in marine cephalopods, particularly in specific regions like Castro Bay.
All samples from the three bays contained microplastics in the gut and stomach of Sparus aurata and Dicentrarchus labrax. Four types of microplastics were identified: fibers, fragments, plastic films, and spherical granules. Airborne-microplastic contamination in blank samples was found to be minimal. While the lowest microplastic counts were found in Boka Kotorska and Vlora Bay, the highest count was found in Castro Bay. A t-test indicated a significant difference between microplastic counts in samples versus procedural blanks (p < 0.001), while analysis of variance revealed significant differences among sample groups (p < 0.05).
Quinolone and tetracyclines were detected in Sparus aurata and Dicentrarchus labrax samples from Castro Bay, while no antibiotic residues were found in samples from Vlora Bay and Boka Kotorska Bay. Multiresidual analysis confirmed these results, revealing the presence of flumequine, tetracycline, oxytetracycline, doxycycline, and chlortetracycline only in samples from Castro Bay. The method showed high selectivity with no interference in blank samples, good recoveries, and a strong fit of matrix validation curves, indicating robustness with minimal matrix effect.
Based on the study’s findings, it is imperative to conduct monitoring and cleanup initiatives to identify the sources of pollution and evaluate potential risks to public health. Further, leveraging the framework established by the ADRINET project across the three sub-regions examined in the present study could serve as a model for regional or national adoption, enabling monitoring seawater pollution and ensuring seafood safety.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the findings indicate that while the environmental conditions in the bays studied by the ADRINET project partners seem positive, with low contaminant levels in caught fish, the presence of microplastics in high concentrations in the stomach and gut of certain fishery products is concerning. Additionally, the ADRINET project was established to foster international collaboration for territorial development and enhance the quality of life for the populations involved. Consequently, the data gathered will contribute to a better understanding of bay contamination and facilitate implementing strategies to ensure seafood quality and safety, thereby supporting economic growth in the regions under investigation.
- The EU Interreg Project “ADRINET”: Assessment of Well-Known and Emerging Pollutants in Seafood and Their Potential Effects for Food Safety. Bonerba E. et al., Foods, 13(8):1235 (2024), DOI: 10.3390/foods13081235, https://www.mdpi.com/2304-8158/13/8/1235
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Enteric parasites Cyclospora cayetanensis and Cryptosporidium hominis in domestic and wildlife animals in Ghana – Parasites & Vectors – Parasites & Vectors
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NASA solar sail boom demonstrator reaches orbit – The Register
NASA’s Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) mission has made contact with Earth and confirmed that all is well with the diminutive spacecraft.
Engineers established two-way communication with the spacecraft a few days after launch as the microwave oven-sized CubeSat passed over the ground hub located at Santa Clara University’s Robotics Systems Lab in Santa Clara, California.
Having confirmed the spacecraft was healthy, engineers can work on the mission’s commissioning phase, which is expected to last between one and two months. Once done, the spacecraft can then deploy the four booms that span the diagonals of the square and unroll the solar sail.
Once that’s done, the spacecraft will conduct a series of tests to demonstrate that it can change its orbit by angling the sail. A successful demonstration will lay the way for larger sails; the sail of ACS3 has an area of 80 square meters – large enough to appear as a bright star in the sky but not enough for missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
According to NASA, “This boom design could potentially support future solar sails as large as 5,400 square feet (500 square meters), about the size of a basketball court, and technology resulting from the mission’s success could support sails of up to 21,500 square feet (2,000 square meters) – about half a soccer field.”
But first, it has to work. Cameras mounted on the spacecraft will capture the deployment of the sail, its shape, and its symmetry.
ACS3 was launched on April 23, 2024, on a Rocket Lab Electron and deposited in a highly circular orbit at 1,000 km.
The primary payload on the launch was NEONSAT-1, an Earth observation satellite and the first of a constellation of 11 spacecraft for the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). NEONSAT-1 was deployed to a 520 km orbit before the Electron Kick Stage completed multiple in-space burns of its Curie engine.
A final burn, following the deployment of ACS3, was performed to speed up the kick stage’s eventual de-orbit. ®
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Archaeologists unveil face of Neanderthal woman 75,000 years after she died: “High stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle” – CBS News
A British team of archaeologists on Thursday revealed the reconstructed face of a 75,000-year-old Neanderthal woman, as researchers reappraise the perception of the species as brutish and unsophisticated.
Named Shanidar Z after the cave in Iraqi Kurdistan where her skull was found in 2018, the latest discovery has led experts to probe the mystery of the forty-something Neanderthal woman laid to rest in a sleeping position beneath a huge vertical stone marker.
The lower part of her skeleton is believed to have been excavated in 1960 during groundbreaking excavations by American archaeologist Ralph Solecki in which he found the remains of at least 10 Neanderthals.
“I think she can help us connect with who they were,” said Dr. Emma Pomeroy, a palaeo-anthropologist on the project from the University of Cambridge.
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s extremely exciting and a massive privilege actually to be able to work with the remains of any individual but especially one as special as her,” she told BBC News.
Solecki’s discovery of a cluster of bodies with one surrounded by clumps of ancient pollen led him to controversially argue that this was evidence of funerary rituals with the dead placed on a bed of flowers.
Political difficulties meant it took around five decades for a team from Cambridge and Liverpool John Moores universities to be allowed back to the site in the Zagros mountains of northern Iraq.
“Skull was as flat as a pizza”
The last Neanderthals mysteriously died out around 40,000 years ago, just a few thousand years after humans arrived.
Shanidar Z’s skull — thought to be the best preserved Neanderthal find this century — had been flattened to a thickness of 0.7 inches, possibly by a rockfall relatively soon after she died.
Professor Graeme Barker from Cambridge’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, told the BBC the “skull was as flat as a pizza, basically.”
JUSTIN TALLIS/AFP via Getty Images
“It’s a remarkable journey to go from that to what you see now,” Barker said. “As an archaeologist, you can sometimes get blasé about what you’re doing. But every now and then you are brought up short by the fact you are touching the past. We forget just what an extraordinary thing it is.”
Shanidar Z is the fifth body to be identified in the cluster buried over a period of at least several hundred years right behind the rock in the center of the cave.
Archaeologists believe the stone was used as an identifier to allow itinerant Neanderthals to return to the same spot to bury their dead.
Latest research by team member Professor Chris Hunt of John Moores now suggests the pollen that gave rise to Solecki’s contentious “flower burial” theory might in fact have come from bees burrowing into the cave floor.
But Hunt said there was still evidence — such as the remains of a partially paralyzed Neanderthal found by Solecki — that the species were more empathetic than previously thought.
“There’s been this huge reappraisal which was actually started by Ralph Solecki in this cave with ‘Shanidar 1’ with his withered arm and his arthritis and his deafness who must have been looked after. That tells us there was compassion,” he said.
The positioning of the bodies in the cluster in the same spot, in the same position and facing in the same direction implied “tradition” and the “passing of knowledge between generations,” he said.
“Exciting” and “terrifying” discovery
“It looks much more like purposeful behavior that you wouldn’t associate with the text book stories about Neanderthals which is that their lives were nasty, brutish and short,” he added.
Pomeroy, the Cambridge palaeo-anthropologist who uncovered Shanidar Z, said finding her skull and upper body had been both “exciting” and “terrifying.”
The skeleton and the surrounding sediment had to be strengthened in situ with a glue-like consolidant before being removed in dozens of small foil-wrapped blocks.
Lead conservator Lucia Lopez-Polin then pieced together the over 200 bits of skull as the first step in the facial reconstruction for the just-released Netflix documentary “Secrets of the Neanderthals.”
Pomeroy said the task had been like a “high stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle” especially as the fragments were very soft “similar in consistency to a biscuit dunked in tea”.
The rebuilt skull was then 3D-printed allowing palaeo-artists and identical twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis in The Netherlands to complete the reconstruction with layers of fabricated muscle and skin for the documentary, which was produced by the BBC Studios Science Unit.
Pomeroy said Neanderthal skulls looked very different to those of humans “with huge brow ridges and lack of chins.”
But she said the recreated face “suggests those differences were not so stark in life,” highlighting the interbreeding between Neanderthals and humans “to the extent that almost everyone alive today still has Neanderthal DNA.”
The BBC reported that the researchers are confident the Neanderthal is a female. Because no pelvic bones were recovered, archaeologists relied on certain dominant proteins found in the tooth enamel that are associated with female genetics. The slight stature of the skeleton also supports the interpretation.
Enteric parasites Cyclospora cayetanensis and Cryptosporidium hominis in domestic and wildlife animals in Ghana – Parasites & Vectors – Parasites & Vectors
NASA solar sail boom demonstrator reaches orbit – The Register
Archaeologists unveil face of Neanderthal woman 75,000 years after she died: “High stakes 3D jigsaw puzzle” – CBS News
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