Southern Ocean Sea Ice Microplastic Analysis - PanAntarctic study 2004-2022

The purpose of this study was to quantify microplastic pollution in the Southern Ocean through the analysis of sea-ice cores from several distinct regions around the Antarctic continent. We analysed 19 sea-ice cores from 10 individual research expeditions across distinct Southern Ocean regions: The Antarctic Peninsula, the Bellinghausen Sea, the Weddell Sea, Queen Maud Land, Prydz Bay, Wilkes Land, Mawson Sea, the Ross Sea, and McMurdo Sound, and sampled between austral summers 2004-2022. The campaigns and drill dates are as follows: ISPOL (Dec 2004), SIMBA (Oct 2007), YROSIAE (Dec 2011 and Nov 2012), SIPEX II (Oct 2012), DAVIS (Nov 2015), AAV2 (Dec 2016), PIPERS (May 2017), AWECS (June 2017), REKT (Jan 2021), and DML (Jan 2022). Abundance, chemical composition and size data for microplastics was obtained from these ice-core samples by means of Fourier-transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR). Sample analysis was conducted with OPUS 8.7 software (Bruker), and the collated OPUS data was exported as an ENVI file and particle analysis was conducted with Purency Microplastic Finder (PMF) an automated analysis software for μFTIR imaging. In the provided excel data set, the sheet labelled “total polymer counts” provides data directly from Purency Microplastic Finder software, including polymer type, pixel size, area, length and width and denoted individually for each ice-core drill site. The sheet labelled “MP concentrations” denotes the abundance of microplastic particles per core, the quantity of sea-ice meltwater filtered, and the integrated abundances of microplastics across drill seasons, sites, and ice textures. The R data tab in data collated from the previous sheets to perform statistical analyses in R to determine if there were significant differences in medians across ice types, pan-Antarctic regions, and seasons.

See the downloadable dataset for more information.