Feeding habits and quantity of ingested microplastics of some goby species distributed in Thi Nai lagoon, Binh Dinh province
Abstract
This study aimed to evaluate feeding habits and microplastic ingestion of three goby species distributed in Thi Nai lagoon, Binh Dinh province. Thirty individuals of each species from fishermen for study. Twenty were dissected to identify natural food and the other ten were used to determine microplastic accumulation in digestive system. The results showed that feeding habits of these three fish species were different, but the occurrence frequency of organic matter in the digestive system of fish was higher than that of other natural food. The concentration of ingested microplastics was from 6.50 to 9.20 particles/fish, from 0.58 to 1.16 particles/g wet body weight and from 31.47 to 57.55 particles/g digestive tract weight and did not significantly differ among these fish species . These three fish species mostly ingested microplastic fibers (75.38 – 82.50%) with most size of 500-2000µm (59.09 – 65.75%). Our findings indicate that the different feeding habits of the three goby species in this study do not affect the amount of ingested microplastics and the microplastics in organic matter are the main source of microplastics accumulated in the digestive system of these three species. Three studies are needed to better characterize the biological and ecological impacts of microplastics on fish.