First report of microplastics in the bodies of deep-sea hydrothermal vent organisms.

Over the last week I have been refining my extraction and staining technique. The first results are in.

 

This is the filtered remains of five limpets from the deep sea that were digested in KOH, filtered, stained with Nile Red, and excited under a blue light. The bright fluorescing orange points and strands are all microplastics extracted from the hydrothermal vent limpet Olgasolaris tollmannii. The blueish structures are the limpets' radulas. Black blobs are chiton left over from the shell.

There is still a ton of work to do here. This is just the first sample, and though I'm confident in my handling protocols, we still need to rule out potential contamination (after all, these samples have been bouncing between marine labs for 10+ years). But this is still about as dramatic a result as you can get.