Sources, impacts and solutions for plastics in South East Asia coastal environments.

Marine coastal environments provide an abundance of natural resources, which sustain economies and societies that are under increasing pressure because of different sources of pollution. The South East (SE) Asian region is facing one of the most important marine plastic pollution crises on the planet, threatening the biodiversity of marine ecosystems and environmental resources, on which depends the economic growth. Plastics are persistent in the marine environment and are mainly degraded by mechanical abrasion, which leads to smaller plastic particles and fibres < 5mm, defined as microplastics (MP) that are of increasing concern. At the organism level, the impact of MPs has been described for many taxa, including plankton, invertebrates, fish, sea turtles, and marine mammals. At the cellular level, MPs can alter digestive enzymes activities such as lipase, esterase, trypsin, amylase, or alkaline phosphatase in several organisms. MPs can also induce oxidative stress through the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), when plastics are recognised as foreign particles by inflammatory cells. Although studies have investigated which species are more susceptible to the plastic uptake within the marine foodwebs, their effects on the ecosystem functioning are not fully understood or quantified at the molecular level. This proposal will describe the threat of different types of marine plastics (MPs), including source and fate in the marine environment (trophic mobility) by monitoring their distributions and abundance in marine compartments (horizontal and vertical distribution and assessing their ecological effects at both organisms and molecular levels to understand their implications for food safety issue, fisheries and human health.