Ingestion and Types of Microplastic in Meretrix lyrata from Buntal Bay Sarawak through Nile Red Fluorescent Tagging

Ngie Hao Eric, Lau (2025) Ingestion and Types of Microplastic in Meretrix lyrata from Buntal Bay Sarawak through Nile Red Fluorescent Tagging. Masters thesis, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS).

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Abstract

Microplastic had emerged as new form of plastic pollution. Many ingestions in biota were reported worldwide. Filter feeder such as bivalves are prone to microplastic ingestion Shellfish were usually consumed as whole, without gut removal. This poses a threat towards human consumption. In this study, hard shell clam (Meretrix lyrata) was chosen and collected 4 times (2 times in both October 2020 (pre-monsoon) and March 2021 (post monsoon) from local fish market (Kampung Buntal Wet Market) to investigate the factor of size class and harvesting season towards the ingestion rate of Meretrix lyrata. Fluorescent tagging using Nile red dye were used to aid the quantification process. Polymer identification were done on isolated suspected particles using Nicolet IN10 µ-FTIR and compared to an open-source FTIR reference library OpenSpecy. All samples (81 samples) in this study were positive with microplastic ingestion. A total of 15867 microplastic were quantified, the most dominant shape type is particle type (89%). The average microplastic size was 0.043 mm 0.069 mm, and average of 195.90 ± 43.6 microplastic/individuals. Results shows that smaller sized clam tends to ingest more microplastic compare to larger sized clams. There were no significant differences (p= 0.05) in microplastic ingestion according to harvesting season This might indicate that habitats for M. lyrata have pervasive microplastic pollution. PVC PP with silicate mix, resin dispersion and PDMS were the four polymers identified from the microplastic particles isolated. All four were common polymers that can be found at place with human settlements. Fluorescent tagging using Nile red is a good method in quantification of microplastic however modification and precautionary steps were needed to obtain optimum results are important for microplastic detection improvements.

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