Temporal change in plastic pollution in the critical habitat of an endangered cetacean on the continental slope, Nova Scotia, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
"The Gully", situated off Nova Scotia, Canada, is the largest submarine canyon in the western North Atlantic. This unique oceanographic feature, which became a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in 2004, is rich in marine biodiversity and the critical habitat of endangered northern bottlenose whales (Hyperoodon ampullatus). To understand the potential impact of plastic pollution in the MPA, and on this endangered cetacean, we evaluated trends in the density and composition of plastics between the 1990s and 2010s and compared these to the stomach contents of two recently stranded northern bottlenose whales. From the 1990s to 2010s, the mean density of small plastic debris (100 µm – 25 mm) increased significantly (up to 129,000 per km2), while the mean density of large plastic debris (¿ 5 cm) has significantly decreased, from 31.5 to 14.0 items per km2. Estimates from the 2010s are lower than nearshore coastal areas, but much higher than surrounding offshore areas. Despite being far from centres of human population, FTIR spectroscopy identified a wide diversity of plastic polymers in The Gully, including polyethylene, polypropylene, PET, nylon, paint containing alkyds, and anthropogenic and semi-synthetic cellulose fibers, from consumer products, vessels, industrial activities, fishing and recreational activities. Whale stomach contents contained fragments of fishing nets, ropes, bottle caps, cups, food wrappers, smaller plastic fragments, fibers, and paint flakes. These debris items ranged from 150 µm to 1.13 m, consistent with the composition and character of items collected from their critical habitat. The unique oceanographic features of The Gully (i.e., currents and bathymetric complexity) may act to trap plastic pollution in this important area. Long-term impacts of plastic ingestion on the recovery of northern bottlenose whales in this region remains to be determined. Also see: https://micro2022.sciencesconf.org/426905/document
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".