• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.125-140
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• 2023

We investigated meiofaunal biofouling (40-1,000 ㎛) on stranded marine plastic debris (hereafter MPD) collected from 8 coastal areas highly affected by plastic pollution located in the southern part of Korea during June, 2021, in order to analyze the abundance and composition of MPD associated organisms. A total of eight shapes of MPD was collected and classified into four types of plastics (LDPE, PET, PP and EPS) based on Resin Identification Coding System. Meiofounal biofouling was identified into 35 taxa belonging to 11 phylum, 10 classes and 12 order, and were numerically dominated by harpacticoids (EPS: 21.6%, PP: 27.1%), nematodes (LDPE: 23.2%) and foraminiferans (PET: 29.6%). Surface area of MPD was negatively correlated with abundances of organisms on the plastic debris (r = -0.487, p < 0.05, n = 24), indicating that abundances (avg. 3,225 inds. 0.1 m^-2) on the smallest area of PP debris (avg. 0.0208 m² ) were higher than those (avg. 50 inds. 0.1 m^-2) on the largest area of LDPE debris (avg. 0.4029 m^-2). Whereas, there was no correlation between surface area of MPD and the number of taxa on the debris (r = 0.147, p = 0.49, n = 24). These results showed that higher abundances of meiofaunal biofouling were observed on the PP material debris than those on the other debris collected from eight hot spots of the southern coastal waters in Korea, associated with not only polymer type and surface area of the PP debris, but also possibly surface microstructure of the PP debris.