Stubbins Leads $1.3M NSF Grant To Investigate Plastics’ Role in Ocean Carbon Cycle
MES/COS/CEE Professor Aron Stubbins, in collaboration with the University of New Hampshire and the Sea Education Association, is leading a $1,319,273 NSF grant for “Nutrient-Mediated Interactions Between Plastic-Derived Dissolved Organic Carbon and the Biological Carbon Pump.” This project is part of critical work at Northeastern to both understand and mitigate the plastics crisis.
The researchers will test the hypothesis that plastics are slowing down the ocean’s ability to take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Currently, the ocean takes up around 25% of all the carbon dioxide emitted from fossil fuels, but plastics may be reducing its ability to offset CO2 emissions. If plastic waste and carbon dioxide emissions are not reduced, the combined outcome will be a planet that is less able to support humanity’s needs for food, clean water, and safe living conditions.
Abstract Source: “Nutrient-Mediated Interactions Between Plastic-Derived Dissolved Organic Carbon and the Biological Carbon Pump”
After a decade of testing, Northeastern researchers have uncovered a “light smog” of microplastics drifting below the surface of the world’s oceans—revealing far more plastic pollution in deep-sea waters than previously known.
Published in Nature, the study combines data from nearly 2,000 ocean sampling stations collected between 2014 and 2024. The findings show that microplastics are not just floating on the surface but are spread throughout the ocean’s depths.
The research is not a global analysis. Sampling for microplastics occurs the most in northern ocean waters, where there is more land and people fringing the water. But in those areas, data shows that plastics are accumulating rapidly.
“Plastics are more or less everywhere,” said Aron Stubbins, professor of marine and environmental sciences, civil and environmental engineering, and chemistry and chemical biology at Northeastern. “We’re finding them deposited in the Antarctic, in the Himalayas, carried by the wind, but to find them well-distributed throughout the ocean is surprising.”
It was already known that plastic debris accumulates in subtropical gyres—or swirling eddies—that trap and concentrate trash on the ocean surface. The new research reveals that below the surface, plastics are floating, suspended, all the way to the ocean floor.
“You’ve got these accumulations on the surface, and the same processes concentrating and leading to accumulations below the gyres into a sort of lens,” Stubbins said.
Plastics like polyethylene and polypropylene are buoyant, so they float on the surface. Other plastics, like the polyethylene terephthalate used to make water bottles, are dense and are more likely to sink to the ocean floor. The fact that microplastics are found everywhere between the surface and the sea floor might be explained by size, Stubbins said.
Read full story at Northeastern Global News