Microplastics

In January of 2019, I traveled to Maui, HI with fellow students, alumni, and faculty from California State University, Channel Islands. My project was to understand if phytoplankton acted as a pump for microplastics in coastal waters. My research materials were stolen during deployment, so focus shifted to a density comparison of bulk seawater samples across 17 sample sites.

In April of 2019, a large jellyfish bloom hit the Channel Islands Harbor. My mentor, Dr. Clare Steele, retreived jellyfish from the harbor for microplastic consumption analysis. To achieve this, I digested the jellyfish in a potassium hydroxide solution and used a vacuum filtration microplastics assembly to filter the organic material. From here, I was able to ennumerate the microplastics present under a dissection microscope. This work has been featured in the VC Star (1), VC Star (2), and CSUCI web pages, as well as the official @csuci Instagram page. Additionally, it was featured on the front cover of Channel Magazine.

The combination of studying microplastics in jellyfish and zooplankton led me to my senior thesis project, which is to understand the population composition of zooplankton in local coastal regions of Ventura County and the methods in which microplastics are bioavailable to these species. I currently have an Instagram page that chronicals these studies, which can be found here.