PAME Work Plan

Treatment of wastewater is often inadequate or completely lacking in Arctic regions. Wastewater con- tains different kinds of substances that can be harmful for the environment and human health, including residues of pharmaceuticals and personal care products. Bioaccumulation and biomagnifications of chem- icals in the food web are of concern. This can affect fishery that is a significant industry in many Arctic coastal regions. Wastewater from human settlements may also contain antibiotic resistant bacteria and pathogens that can cause negative impacts on human health and the environment. In the Arctic, especially, the direct release of untreated sewage may have severe consequences for the receiving environment due to low biological diversity, low ambient temperatures and consequently high vulnerability of the Arctic ecosystem to environmental contaminants.

Bucket toilets are common in remote settlements but are also used in towns. In settlements having inadequate sanitary facilities the risk of contracting diseases, such as hepatitis A, is unacceptably high. Conventional centralized wastewater collection systems and treatment plants are a challenge to build in the Arctic and expensive to operate. Thus alternative methods are needed. Possible solutions are improved dry or low flush toilets with collection of toilet waste at the household level and subsequent centralized treatment by dry composting or anaerobic digestion. Both treatment methods facilitate co-treatment of wastewater along with other organic waste fractions and provide a by-product that is environmentally safe and easy to handle. Combining the above with decentralized greywater treatment will reduce the costs for expensive infrastructure.

Marine plastic litter is a global problem. For the Arctic, which is far from the industrialized and highly populated areas, marine plastic litter is an ongoing and growing problem. The global plastic production reached 322 million tons in 2015, and is growing with ~4% per year. It is therefore likely that the contamination of the Arctic area with plastic litter will increase in the future. Plastic has been observed in all abiotic environments within the European Arctic. The concentration of plastics are comparable or even higher than in more urban and populated areas. There are also indications that the amount of plastic within the European Arctic is increasing. Human settlements within the Arctic also contribute to plastic pollution.

Most studies investigating plastic in Arctic species, have found plastic. OSPAR (Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic) has set an Ecological Quality Objective, that less than 10 % of the monitored fulmar population should not have more than 0.1 gram plastic in their stomachs. In Svalbard, 22.5 % of fulmars have ≥ 0.1 g plastic in their stomachs. This is comparable to observations in Iceland (28%), but lower than other southern locations, such as the North Sea, where in 2007-2011 62% of the fulmar population had ≥ 0.1 g. However, the occurrence of plastic in fulmar stomachs is higher in Svalbard (87.5%) than Iceland (79.3%). In addition, floating plastic litter and plastic objects act as long-distance transport devices for invasive species to the Arctic.

There is a pressing need to address the many gaps in our knowledge of plastic in the Arctic environment and in the Arctic species. The high levels of micro- and small micro plastic found in sea ice and sediments highlight the importance of management action to reduce marine litter globally. We need to better understand how plastic impact our Arctic environment and the species living here.

This section reviews the state of knowledge to late-2015 concerning microplastic in the Arctic. Marine litter and especially plastic debris in the oceans has emerged as a major environmental concern worldwide and is recognized as a threat to marine ecosystems due to the vast amounts involved (Jambeck et al., 2015). Plastics are man-made materials comprising a wide range of organic polymers. They are semi- persistent and known to break down from macroplastic particles (>5 mm in size) to smaller plastic particles through exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light and physical abrasion, but total degradation is slow (Gewert et al., 2015). Most of the plastic material floating in the world’s oceans is microplastic debris (<5 mm) (Cózar et al., 2014; Law et al., 2014b). Plastics are released into the environment during industrial activities such as commercial fishing, use of plastic abrasives, and spillage of plastic pellets, but also from domestic applications such as washing of plastic microfiber clothes, use of personal care products containing microplastics (e.g. toothpaste and exfoliators) and municipal wastewater.

River inputs of nutrients and organic matter impact the biogeochemistry of arctic estuaries and the Arctic Ocean as a whole, yet there is considerable uncertainty about the magnitude of fluvial fluxes at the pan-Arctic scale. Samples from the six largest arctic rivers, with a combined watershed area of 11.3×106 km2, have revealed strong seasonal variations in constituent concentrations and fluxes within rivers as well as large differences among the rivers. Specifically, we investigate fluxes of dissolved organic carbon, dissolved organic nitrogen, total dissolved phospho- rus, dissolved inorganic nitrogen, nitrate, and silica. This is the first time that seasonal and annual constituent fluxes have been determined using consistent sampling and analytical methods at the pan-Arctic scale and consequently provide the best available estimates for constituent flux from land to the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas. Given the large inputs of river water to the relatively small Arctic Ocean and the dramatic impacts that climate change is having in the Arctic, it is particularly urgent that we establish the contemporary river fluxes so that we will be able to detect future changes and evaluate the impact of the changes on the biogeochemistry of the receiving coastal and ocean systems.

Fishing gear may continue to fish after it has been lost. Large catches have been observed during cruises to retrieve lost gillnets in Norwegian waters, especially in the fishery for Greenland halibut (Reinhardtius hippoglossoides). The Norwegian Greenland halibut is overexploited, and there is serious concern about the effect of lost nets on this stock. Catches in deliberately lost gillnets were studied in the fishery for Greenland halibut off the coast of mid-Norway in July 2000 and June 2001. Gillnet fleets were deployed at depths of between 537 and 851 m, and the soak time ranged from 1 to 68 days. Most of the catch consisted of the target species, and the proportions of different species did not change with soak time. All individuals caught were categorized in terms of seven condition states. A gradual shift from fresh to decomposed individuals over time was evident. The catching efficiency of gillnets decreased with soak time, presumably due to the weight of the catch causing the headline height to decrease, and after 45 days was only about 20–30% of that of nets used in the commercial fishery. Catch rates were estimated after stabilization at 67–100 and 28–43 kg per day per gillnet fleet in 2000 and 2001, respectively. The results indicated that gillnets lost in this area continue to fish for long periods of time. Annual losses of nets need to be quantified in order to estimate the effects of ghost fishing on stock levels, a figure that is currently lacking.

It is often assumed that ingestion of microplastics by aquatic species leads to increased exposure to plastic additives. However, experimental data or model based evidence is lacking. Here we assess the potential of leaching of nonylphenol (NP) and bisphenol A (BPA) in the intestinal tracts of Arenicola marina (lugworm) and Gadus morhua (North Sea cod). We use a biodynamic model that allows calcu- lations of the relative contribution of plastic ingestion to total exposure of aquatic species to chemicals residing in the ingested plastic. Uncertainty in the most crucial parameters is accounted for by proba- bilistic modeling. Our conservative analysis shows that plastic ingestion by the lugworm yields NP and BPA concentrations that stay below the lower ends of global NP and BPA concentration ranges, and therefore are not likely to constitute a relevant exposure pathway. For cod, plastic ingestion appears to be a negligible pathway for exposure to NP and BPA.

In this review we report new findings concerning interaction between marine debris and wildlife. Deleterious effects and consequences of entangle- ment, consumption and smothering are highlighted and discussed. The number of species known to have been affected by either entanglement or ingestion of plas- tic debris has doubled since 1997, from 267 to 557 species among all groups of wildlife. For marine turtles the number of affected species increased from 86 to 100 % (now 7 of 7 species), for marine mammals from 43 to 66 % (now 81 of 123 species) and for seabirds from 44 to 50 % of species (now 203 of 406 spe- cies). Strong increases in records were also listed for fish and invertebrates, groups that were previously not considered in detail. In future records of interac- tions between marine debris and wildlife we recommend to focus on standardized data on frequency of occurrence and quantities of debris ingested. In combination with dedicated impact studies in the wild or experiments, this will allow more detailed assessments of the deleterious effects of marine debris on individuals and populations.