We hope to continue our work investigating how plastics and their associated contaminants are impacting the organisms within Tetiaroa. We will collect our first round of plastic degradation samples from Tiaraunu (on lab and underwater) to determine how these plastics degraded over the previous year and learn what microbial communities settled on the plastics. Second, we will explore the atoll to find locations where corals and algae are interacting. We plan to take microbiome samples, PAM samples and chlorophyll samples to understand this interaction. Then, we will bring a sample of the coral/algae to the lab and perform a multiple stressor experiment to determine how the microbiome of the coral/algae/water changes when exposed to increased temperature, a plastic leachate, and both increased temperature and leachate. The third and final project for this trip will be to find and collect zooplankton, sponges and water to determine baseline levels of plastics/leachates in these organisms within Tetiaroa. In addition to determining the baseline levels, we will again collect microbiome samples.

Approved