Accumulation of Microplastics in the Digestive Tract and Gonads and its Effects on Gonad Quality of Sea Urchins Tripneustes gratilla
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21776/ub.biotropika.2023.011.01.07Abstract
Marine plastic debris will move with the flow of water and float and then be fragmented into smaller particles, namely microplastics, sink, and settle on the substrate. Sea urchins, as deposit feeders, can potentially ingest microplastic particles, which can influence changes in behaviour, growth, enzyme production, reproduction, and tissue structure. This study used a purposive sampling method with descriptive analysis for data related to the recording of morphometrics and gonadal quality, followed up with the Tukey and Pearson tests. This study aims to analyze how the accumulation of microplastics in the organs (digestive tract and gonads) affects the gonadal quality of sea urchins Tripneustes gratilla. The results show that the number of microplastic particles found in fi [1ve sea urchins from each beach was 233 particles/individual in the digestive tract of sea urchins and 205 particles/individual in the gonads with the colour variants transparent, multicolour, blue, yellow, red, green, and purple. Gonadal quality assessment indicators are colour, firmness, and gonadal index. Gonads with good quality were shown by sea urchins from Laha beach (site 1) with a composition of 40% bright orange, 40% yellow/pale yellow, and 20% brown, very firm of 80% and not firm of 20%, and a gonadal index value of 7.57 %. In contrast, gonads with poor quality were shown by sea urchins from Erie beach (site 4) with a composition of 80% brown and 20% grey, a very firm of 60% and firm of 40%, and a gonadal index value of 3.08%. This different quality is thought to be the result of microplastic accumulation in the sea urchin organs, which causes the satiated delusion. This study shows that sea urchins in the waters of Outer Ambon Bay have been affected by the dangers of microplastics by decreasing the quality of the gonads produced. Therefore, it is necessary to prevent the waste problem in the waters of Ambon Bay and to cultivate long-term sea urchins.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Biotropika: Journal of Tropical Biology
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright and Attribution:
Articles in Biotropika: Journal of Tropical Biology are under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC-BY-NC) copyright. The work has not been published before (except in the form of an abstract or part of a published lecture or thesis) and it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. When the manuscript is accepted for publication in this journal, the authors agree to the automatic transfer of the copyright to the publisher.
Journal of Biotropika: Journal of Tropical Biology is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0).
Permissions:
Authors wishing to include figures, tables, or text passages that have already been published elsewhere and by other authors are required to obtain permission from the copyright owner(s) for both the print and online format and to include evidence that such permission has been granted when submitting their papers. Any material received without such evidence will be assumed to originate from one of the authors.
Ethical matters:
Experiments with animals or involving human patients must have had prior approval from the appropriate ethics committee. A statement to this effect should be provided within the text at the appropriate place. Experiments involving plants or microorganisms taken from countries other than the author's own must have had the correct authorization for this exportation.
