A STANDARDISED REPORTING FRAMEWORK AND CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE CURRENT STATE OF RESEARCH WITH A FOCUS ON SUBMARINE CANYONS
AIM:
Towards standardising reporting of macro-litter (and interactions) in Submarine Canyons to better understand the effects of litter on habitats and fauna to aid conservation efforts.
Submarine canyons act as conduits, transporting sediment and organic matter from the continental shelf to the abyssal plain; and can act as passive accumulation areas for marine litter. It is well documented that the deep sea is the ultimate sink for litter such as microplastics, and submarine canyons harbour large amounts of litter; but to date little is known about the impact of marine litter on deep-sea environments, especially submarine canyons beyond simple recording and/or enumeration of litter types.
Monitoring and quantification of marine litter often do not consider interactions between fauna and litter, meaning impacts are largely unconsidered and unknown. Among publications that have reported litter-fauna (L-F) interactions in canyons, the large majority occur in the Mediterranean Sea, and the most reported interaction is of corals entangled in fishing gear. When it occurs, the reporting of L-F interactions is unstandardised, resulting in a lack of global comparison and trend analysis.
Background:
1. Identify current state of research on marine litter in submarine canyons:
Hernandez et al. (2022) FMS:
URL: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2022.965612/full
2. Critically evaluate the literature for reporting of litter-fauna interaction and develop a standardised framework for reporting:
Bruemmer et al. (2023). FMS
URL: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2023.1225114/full
Two systematic reviews
were undertaken to:
A standardised, comprehensive framework for the reporting of
L-F interactions was created and includes 6 major categories: entanglement, ingestion, smothering, habitat provision, adaptive behaviour, and encountering (entanglement and smothering occur on abiotic features as well).
Taken from Figure 4 – see Bruemmer et al. (2023). FMS
Litter-fauna entanglement, smothering, habitat provision, and encountering examples.
This work identifies the gaps in knowledge and presents a standardised litter-fauna interaction framework for deep-sea imagery data.
This is a ‘call to action’ to the submarine canyon and deep-sea researcher community-at-large with the goal being implementation of the litter-fauna interaction framework to kickstart connectivity and comparability between researchers observing L-F interactions all over the world. Without this standardised reporting method and analysis of global trends, the types and scale of the long-term ecological impacts of marine litter cannot truly be assessed.
Please contact us with collaborative opportunities/data sharing to employ the MLI Framework to identify Marine Litter interactions within submarine canyons and the wider deep sea areas.
Collaborative opportunity