The DOI matches its Crossref record; 16 of the 16 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The imprint of microfibres in southern European deep seas
Open accessAbstract
Pollution of the marine environment by large and microscopic plastic fragments and their potential impacts on organisms has stimulated considerable research interest and has received widespread publicity. However, relatively little attention has been paid to the fate and effects of microplastic particles that are fibrous in shape, also referred as microfibres, which are mostly shed from synthetic textiles during production or washing. Here we assess composition and abundance of microfibres in seafloor sediments in southern European seas, filling gaps in the limited understanding of the long-range transport and magnitude of this type of microplastic pollution. We report abundances of 10-70 microfibres in 50 ml of sediment, including both natural and regenerated cellulose, and synthetic plastic (polyester, acrylic, polyamide, polyethylene, and polypropylene) fibres. Following a shelf-slope-deep basin continuum approach, based on the relative abundance of fibres it would appear that coastal seas retain around 33% of the sea floor microfibres, but greater quantities of the fibres are exported to the open sea, where they accumulate in sediments. Submarine canyons act as preferential conduits for downslope transport of microfibres, with 29% of the seafloor microfibres compared to 18% found on the open slope. Around 20% of the microfibres found had accumulated in the deep open sea beyond 2000m of water depth. The remoteness of the deep sea does not prevent the accumulation of microfibres, being available to become integrated into deep sea organisms.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Accumulation and fragmentation of plastic debris in global environments
Barnes, D. K. A., Galgani, F., Thompson, R. C., & Barlaz, M. (2009) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2008.0205 · Cited by 6,126
Self-citationHidalgo-Ruz, V., Gutow, L., Thompson, R. C., & Thiel, M. (2012) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es2031505 · Cited by 5,440
Self-citationLife in the “plastisphere”: microbial communities on plastic marine debris
Zettler, E. R., Mincer, T. J., & Amaral-Zettler, L. A. (2013) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es401288x · Cited by 3,368 · cited 1×
“However, there are some evidences that microbes may also play a role via physical or metabolic means [62, 63].”
BackgroundA bacterium that degrades and assimilates poly(ethylene terephthalate)
Yoshida, S., Hiraga, K., Takehana, T., Taniguchi, I., Yamaji, H., Maeda, Y., Toyohara, K., Miyamoto, K., Kimura, Y., & Oda, K. (2016) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aad6359 · Cited by 3,367
Plastic debris in the open ocean
Cózar, A., Echevarría, F., González-Gordillo, J. I., Irigoien, X., Úbeda, B., Hernández-León, S., Palma, Á. T., Navarro, S., García-de-Lomas, J., Ruiz, A., et al. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1314705111 · Cited by 3,133
Lusher, A. L., McHugh, M., & Thompson, R. C. (2013) · Marine Pollution Bulletin · doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.11.028 · Cited by 2,075
Self-citationThe deep sea is a major sink for microplastic debris
Woodall, L. C., Sanchez-Vidal, A., Canals, M., Paterson, G. L. J., Coppock, R., Sleight, V., Calafat, A., Rogers, A. D., Narayanaswamy, B. E., & Thompson, R. C. (2014) · Royal Society Open Science · doi:10.1098/rsos.140317 · Cited by 1,946 · cited 7×
“Even though low floating microfibre abundances may be directly related to the relatively large (usually 330 μm) mesh size of the net [41], this is new evidence, after [14], confirming deep-sea sediments as a major sink for microfibres.”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationMicroplastic pollution in deep-sea sediments
Van Cauwenberghe, L., Vanreusel, A., Mees, J., & Janssen, C. R. (2013) · Environmental Pollution · doi:10.1016/j.envpol.2013.08.013 · Cited by 1,575
Spatial patterns of plastic debris along estuarine shorelines
Browne, M. A., Galloway, T. S., & Thompson, R. C. (2010) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/es903784e · Cited by 1,246 · cited 4×
“Synthetic (polyester, acrylic, polypropylene, polyamide) microfibres may be entering the ocean via wastewaters [11, 19, 20] and atmospheric fallout [21], and have been found in surface waters [22, 23], sea ice [15] and in coastal [24, 25, 26] and deep water sediments [14, 27].”
BackgroundInfluentialSelf-citationLusher, A. L., Tirelli, V., O’Connor, I., & Officer, R. (2015) · Scientific Reports · doi:10.1038/srep14947 · Cited by 1,170
Cited by
Veerasingam, S., Ranjani, M., Venkatachalapathy, R., Bagaev, A., Mukhanov, V., Litvinyuk, D., Mugilarasan, M., Gurumoorthi, K., Guganathan, L., Aboobacker, V. M., et al. (2021) · Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology · doi:10.1080/10643389.2020.1807450 · Cited by 561
Microfibers in oceanic surface waters: a global characterization
Suaria, G., Achtypi, A., Perold, V., Lee, J. R., Pierucci, A., Bornman, T. G., Aliani, S., & Ryan, P. G. (2020) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aay8493 · Cited by 528
Kane, I. A., & Clare, M. A. (2019) · Frontiers in Earth Science · doi:10.3389/feart.2019.00080 · Cited by 476
De Falco, F., Cocca, M., Avella, M., & Thompson, R. C. (2020) · Environmental Science & Technology · doi:10.1021/acs.est.9b06892 · Cited by 452
Self-citationSimon-Sánchez, L., Grelaud, M., Garcia-Orellana, J., & Ziveri, P. (2019) · Science of The Total Environment · doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2019.06.168 · Cited by 312
Metadata
- Authors
- Sanchez-Vidal, A., Thompson, R. C., Canals, M., & de Haan, W. P.
- Venue
- PLOS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2018-11-05
- Volume
- 13
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- e0207033
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2900334515
- Cited by
- 211
- References
- 16
- FWCI
- 7.69
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The imprint of microfibres in southern European deep seas. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1371/journal.pone.0207033
- The paper
- Sanchez-Vidal, A., Thompson, R. C., Canals, M., & de Haan, W. P. (2018). The imprint of microfibres in southern European deep seas. PLOS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0207033
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
