AUTHOR=Franceschini Simone , Cau Alessandro , D’Andrea Lorenzo , Follesa Maria Cristina , Russo Tommaso TITLE=Eating Near the Dump: Identification of Nearby Plastic Hotspot as a Proxy for Potential Microplastic Contamination in the Norwegian Lobster (Nephrops norvegicus) JOURNAL=Frontiers in Marine Science VOLUME=8 YEAR=2021 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.682616 DOI=10.3389/fmars.2021.682616 ISSN=2296-7745 ABSTRACT=
Plastic waste dumped in the marine environment has severe ecological, social and economic impacts. In recent years, a series of scientific studies documented the contamination by macroplastic and its impact on marine organisms through the accidental ingestion of microplastics, which also originate from the degradation of macroplastic. However, the relationship between the spatial distribution of marine litter and the ingestion of plastics by organisms have never been related. In this work, we aimed to investigate, through a modeling approach, the relations between potential sources of microplastic particles (i.e., seafloor macroplastic accumulation hotspots detected by means of trawl surveys), and the ingestion by the benthic crustacean Norwegian lobster (