March 9, 2023 — As an agrarian civilization, almost all of what humans eat is farmed — with the notable exception of seafood. Aside from some farmed fish, most seafood we consume is still caught in the wild. Yet while it might seem that there is something more pure and traditional about consuming “wild” food as opposed to farmed food, the seafood that we eat soaks in a sea contaminated by plastic — and it turns out that a lot of that pollution may be making its way into our bodies via seafood.
Indeed, when it comes to plastics, consumers of seafood may be eating so much of the pernicious pollution that they are regularly chowing down on the equivalents of soda bottles and credit cards. Yet you will never hear a literal “crunch,” and the reason for this is simple, unsettling and disgusting: The plastic in your seafood is “microplastic,” a term for any plastic particle that is less than 5 mm in length.
Though you can neither feel or taste it (usually), the odds are high that it is in your seafood. The most recent example of this came from a 2022 study in the scientific journal Marine Pollution Bulletin. It found that three out of four commercial fish species from Australia and New Zealand contained microplastics in their edible flesh. On average there were 2.5 microplastic particles for each fish.
“The presence of microplastics in commercial seafood is well-documented on a global scale for finfish as well as shellfish like mussels, clams, oysters, and shrimp,” Dr. Britta Baechler, Associate Director of Ocean Plastics Research at Ocean Conservancy, told Salon by email. Baechler cited a recent review study that found that 60% of fish examined globally contained microplastics; it also found that carnivorous fish tend to contain more microplastics than omnivores. “This is particularly notable considering that many commercially important fish species are carnivorous,” Baechler added.