Microplastics and Ocean Life

BU Marine Program students and faculty are studying the impact of tiny plastics on coastal environments

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On an early summer’s day, BU Marine Program students joined Alyssa Novak, a research assistant professor, to take sediment cores from an eelgrass bed at Annisquam’s Cambridge Beach in Gloucester, Mass. The core is used to quantify and assess the accumulation of microplastics. The tiny plastics can be harmful to ocean life, like eelgrass, which Novak describes as a foundation species. “It provides a number of ecological and economic services to coastal environments, including providing habitat and food to a myriad of organisms.”

Photos by Alex Gagne

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  • Alyssa Novak (far right), a research assistant professor, shows (from left to right) Cece Gerstenbacher (CAS’22, GRS’22), Ryen Guthrie (CAS’22), and intern Mia Filardi a sediment core that has been extracted from an eelgrass bed.

  • Gerstenbacher takes a sediment core from an eelgrass bed.

  • “The core is being used to quantify microplastics and assess accumulation patterns,” says Novak.

  • Gerstenbacher and Hannah Ferraro (CAS’21) extract sediment from the core and look for the presence of microplastics. “Microplastics are being found throughout coastal and marine ecosystems and we are documenting where they occur,” says Novak.

  • Novak says she and the students have been working on the project since last fall—because everything is outdoors, they were able to carry on despite the pandemic.