New Research In
Physical Sciences
Social Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
Biological Sciences
Featured Portals
Articles by Topic
- Agricultural Sciences
- Anthropology
- Applied Biological Sciences
- Biochemistry
- Biophysics and Computational Biology
- Cell Biology
- Developmental Biology
- Ecology
- Environmental Sciences
- Evolution
- Genetics
- Immunology and Inflammation
- Medical Sciences
- Microbiology
- Neuroscience
- Pharmacology
- Physiology
- Plant Biology
- Population Biology
- Psychological and Cognitive Sciences
- Sustainability Science
- Systems Biology
Prey-size plastics are invading larval fish nurseries
Edited by James A. Estes, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, and approved October 2, 2019 (received for review April 30, 2019)

Significance
Many of the world’s marine fish spend the first days to weeks feeding and developing at the ocean surface. However, very little is known about the ocean processes that govern larval fish survivorship and hence adult fish populations that supply essential nutrients and protein to human societies. We demonstrate that surface slicks, meandering lines of convergence on the ocean surface, are important larval fish nurseries that disproportionately accumulate nonnutritious, toxin-laden prey-size plastics. Plastic pieces were found in numerous larval fish taxa at a time when nutrition is critical for survival. Surface slicks are a ubiquitous coastal ocean feature, suggesting that plastic accumulation in these larval fish nurseries could have far reaching ecological and socioeconomic impacts.
Abstract
Life for many of the world’s marine fish begins at the ocean surface. Ocean conditions dictate food availability and govern survivorship, yet little is known about the habitat preferences of larval fish during this highly vulnerable life-history stage. Here we show that surface slicks, a ubiquitous coastal ocean convergence feature, are important nurseries for larval fish from many ocean habitats at ecosystem scales. Slicks had higher densities of marine phytoplankton (1.7-fold), zooplankton (larval fish prey; 3.7-fold), and larval fish (8.1-fold) than nearby ambient waters across our study region in Hawai‘i. Slicks contained larger, more well-developed individuals with competent swimming abilities compared to ambient waters, suggesting a physiological benefit to increased prey resources. Slicks also disproportionately accumulated prey-size plastics, resulting in a 60-fold higher ratio of plastics to larval fish prey than nearby waters. Dissections of hundreds of larval fish found that 8.6% of individuals in slicks had ingested plastics, a 2.3-fold higher occurrence than larval fish from ambient waters. Plastics were found in 7 of 8 families dissected, including swordfish (Xiphiidae), a commercially targeted species, and flying fish (Exocoetidae), a principal prey item for tuna and seabirds. Scaling up across an ∼1,000 km2 coastal ecosystem in Hawai‘i revealed slicks occupied only 8.3% of ocean surface habitat but contained 42.3% of all neustonic larval fish and 91.8% of all floating plastics. The ingestion of plastics by larval fish could reduce survivorship, compounding threats to fisheries productivity posed by overfishing, climate change, and habitat loss.
Footnotes
- ↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: jamison.gove{at}noaa.gov.
↵2J.M.G. and J.L.W. contributed equally to this work.
Author contributions: J.M.G. and J.L.W. conceived the study with assistance from M. A. McManus and J.J.P.; J.L.W. led data collection and processing with assistance from J.M.G. and G.P.A.; J.M.G. and G.J.W. developed and implemented the analyses with assistance from J.L.W., J. Lecky, F.C.C., and P.N.; J. Li, K.A.S., J.E.P., D.R.K., K.A.B., E.A.C., M.E.M., and M. A. Merrifield made substantive contributions to data acquisition and materials and methods development; and J.M.G. and G.J.W. wrote the paper with assistance from J.L.W. and J.A.M.
The authors declare no competing interest.
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
Data deposition: All data and code used in this manuscript are in SI Appendix and available from NOAA’s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center GitHub site (https://github.com/PIFSCstockassessments/fishnurseries).
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.1907496116/-/DCSupplemental.
- Copyright © 2019 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.
This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
Citation Manager Formats
Sign up for Article Alerts
Article Classifications
- Biological Sciences
- Ecology














