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Through Pandemic, Research Remains Top Priority at UMWTranscript
Hello everybody. My name is Thomas Bustamante. I am a junior biology major and my project is called “Assessing the Presence and Concentrations of Microplastics in the Gizzards of Virginia Waterfowl.” Now, microplastics are a newly discovered threat when it comes to pollution. They are formally defined as small plastic fragments that are under 5 millimeters in length or diameter, and the effects of these plastics on organisms, as well as their distributions in freshwater environments, are largely unknown. This is due to a few reasons. First off, most of the work on them has been done in saltwater environments like the ocean, and they’re very difficult to study and work with in the laboratory environment. Everyone’s doing something different when it comes to working with these plastics and as a result, we cannot compare measurements from different people. So that’s where my work comes in. I am attempting to develop a reliable method in extracting and measuring these plastics in the gizzards of ducks and geese. And from there I’m going to attempt to compare their concentrations across Virginia to get a sense of their distribution in our area. This will hopefully not only give us a sense of what microplastics are doing to organisms and how susceptible they are, but it will give us an idea of where microplastics are concentrated, at least in Virginia.
