Steve Cofone, UR - Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught.

                                           Micro Plastics

It’s in the water, but is it in our food supply?

What we know is that it is in our water supply, both fresh and salt

water. Maia Mcguire, UF Extension agent for this area has done extensive research and data collection. Here is a link to her Awareness Map .

She has concentrated mostly on sampling the water in and around Florida.She is a wealth of information on the subject.

 We know it's in shellfish, and there was a study in England that documents

microplastics in 10 species of fish from the English Channel. 504

Fish were examined and plastics found in the gastrointestinal

tracts of 36.5%. (Lusher, 2017)

Scientific Question: Are Microplastics found in the digestive tract

of bottom feeding fish?

Map of my fishing spots for this Independent Research Project

Randomly chosen fishing spots 1-4 (right click open in new tab)

 What I will need and how I will preform my project:

Materials

•Fishing equipment                                

•Sample Preservation material/Ice, cooler

•GPS Unit/phone/Field Book(550f)

•Analysis Laboratory (microscope)

 Methods

-Fish each spot at best times to catch fish, log pertinent

information with gps coordinates.

-catch fish, preserve intestinal tract,

-bring to the lab at school and

examine/measure/count microplastics, I will then graph and evaluate

Questions....Comments....Suggestions??

References:

•Lusher, A. (2017). Occurrence of microplastics in the 

gastrointestinal tract of pelagic and demersal fish from the English

 Channel. Sciencedirect.com. Retrieved 30 March 2017, from 

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0025326X1200

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