OCCURRENCE AND CHARACTERIZATION OF MICROPLASTICS IN THE COASTAL WATERS OF THOOTHUKUDI
The usage of plastics for commercial purposes is increasing day by day and about 8 million tonnes of plastics were dumped in to the ocean. Microplastics possess a serious threat to all aquatic life .Gulf of Mannar Biosphere Reserve is highly productive area both in species and habitat bio-diversity. Monitoring of microplastics in the marine environment is of great concern in protecting our aquatic resources and to formulate mitigating measures.Hence, occurrence of microplastics and its quantification in the marine environment needs to be highlighted.
Water samples were collected from Threspuram and SPIC Nagar coastal waters of Thoothukudi.The collected water samples were subjected to digestion and density separation and the microplastics were extracted. The physical characteristics of microplastics such as size, colour, shape were analyzed. The polymer characterisation of microplastics was carried out by FT-IR spectroscopy.
The average microplastics concentration in Threspuram coastal water was 12microplastics/100m3 and in SPIC Nagar coastal water, it was 8 microplastics/100m3.The majority of microplastics in Threspuram coastal water were of fragments type, where as in SPIC Nagar, most of them were fibrous type. The size of microplastics found in Threspuram and SPIC Nagar coastal waters were less than 500µ which shows that microplastics can easily ingested by all forms of aquatic life found in the environment. The polymers of microplastics identified were polyamide, polyethylene and polypropylene. This study will provide database to formulate mitigation measures for microplastics and their impacts on the marine environment, thereby protect marine biodiversity and natural resources.
