Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Marine Pollution Bulletin journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpolbul Occurrence of surface sand microplastic and litter in Macajalar Bay, Philippines Minsarib L. Kalnasa a,b , Sheena Mae O. Lantaca a,c , Lynnel C. Boter a , Geran John T. Flores a , Van Ryan Kristopher R. Galarpe a,d, ⁎ a Department of Environmental Science & Technology, University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines b Department of Forestry, Western Mindanao State University, Zamboanga City, Philippines c Department of Environment and Natural Resources Region 10, Cagayan de Oro, Philippines d Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines ARTICLEINFO Keywords: Litter Macajalar Bay Microplastics Surface sand ABSTRACT Microplastics have become an emerging structural pollutant to the marine environment particularly in the Philippines owing to high plastic load. This study was carried out to determine the occurrence of microplastic andcoastallitterinMacajalarBay,Philippines.Threecoastalareaswerestudiednamely,Opol,ElSalvadorCity, andAlubijidwiththreesubstationsineacharea.Atotalofninesurfacesandsedimentsampleswerecollectedfor microplastic analysis. Microplastics were extracted through the fotation method and preliminary identifcation wascarriedoutusingastereomicroscope.Thebeachlitterswereobtainedthroughtransectwalkina5m×10m quadrant per area. Overall, studied microplastics were mainly angular and flament type with colors varying from blue, black, light orange, pale white, and translucent. Litter analysis showed the dominance of plastics across the study area with a mean cumulative coastal clean index (CCI) of 2.40 (clean). The global concern on solid waste management brought by plastic deposition and associated leached contaminants (Galarpe and Parilla, 2014a; Galarpe and Parilla, 2014b) have greatly afected the marine ecosystems. Recent studies showed that solid waste like plastics or beach litters can be degraded to microplastics contaminating water and sediment columns (Imhof et al., 2013; Eriksen et al., 2014; Woodall et al., 2014; Song et al., 2015). Current estimates of the total mass of plastic foating in the oceans vary, ranging from 7000 to>250,000 tons (Cózar et al., 2014; Eriksen et al., 2014). Its presence in coastal zones and open oceans gained attention owing to its ecological threats to the marine life upon ingestion or entanglement (Digka et al., 2018; Kumar et al., 2018).Thisrenderedtheneedforthepresentstudyinthe locality of Macajalar Bay, Philippines. MacajalarBay,Philippines(Fig.1)isadjacenttoahighlyurbanizing province of Misamis Oriental. Previous fndings in the bay showed unregulated solid waste and wastewater disposal among coastal com- munities (Felisilda et al., 2018). Eventually along with other factors wastes disposal infuenced water quality in the bay. This is corrobo- rated by water quality studies in six sites in bay which covered in- dustrial and ecotourism areas showing increased in coliform, oil and grease, and chemical oxygen demand (Encarguez et al., 2019). Past fndings, however, do not account for the deposition of waste to the bay, necessitating the current study to initially identify waste via mi- croplastic and litter forms. Particularly, Opol, El Salvador City, and Alubijid were identifed as sampling areas with three substations per area (Fig. 1 and Table 1). Opol (S1-S3) is mainly an ecotourism municipality with peripheral commercial establishments. El Salvador City (S4-S6) is a newly devel- oped city with food processing industries. Lastly, Alubijid is mainly categorized as an agricultural municipality. All areas had tourism, in- frastructure, and commercial developments recently which may have exerted ecological pressure to the bay through unmonitored plastic disposal. Initial sampling was conducted in April 2018 during a low tide condition. Surface sands were collected using metal shovel by estab- lishing1m×1mquadrantwith5mdistancesamongquadrants.About 1cm depth of the surface sand was sampled to extract microplastic and litter debris (Herrera et al., 2018). Stations were preidentifed to be accessible at the time of sampling. All sand samples were separately contained in aluminum foil before laboratory analysis to discount container plastic associated interference (Claessens et al., 2011; Hidalgo-Ruz et al., 2012; Corcona et al., 2015). Beach litters were https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.110521 Received 4 July 2019; Received in revised form 8 August 2019; Accepted 14 August 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author at: Department of Environmental Science & Technology, University of Science and Technology of Southern Philippines & Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM), University of the Philippines E-mail address: vanryangalarpe@gmail.com (V.R.K.R. Galarpe). Marine Pollution Bulletin 149 (2019) 110521 Available online 19 August 2019 0025-326X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T