Echinodermata

3.1.5. Echinodermata

The presence and effects of MPs have been studied in several species of benthic starfish, sea urchins, and sea cucumbers. MPs were investigated in Haizhou Bay, China, in the starfish Asterias rollestoni , the sea urchin Hemicentrotus pulcherrimus , and the sea cucumber Acaudina molpadioides ; in the Canary Islands in the sea urchin Diadema africanum ; in the Adriatic Sea in the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus ; and off the island of Ibiza, Spain, in the sea cucumber Holothuria tubulosa . These MPs were mostly in the form of fibers, and the most commonly detected polymers were PE, PP, and PET ( Avio et al., 2020; Lombardo et al., 2022; Xie et al., 2024a). MPs in the sea urchins Echinometra mathaei and Diadema setosum of the islands of Pari and Harapan, Indonesia, were predominantly reported as fragments (75%). PES and PP were reported to have the highest rates (Rahmawati et al., 2023). In Jiaozhou Bay, China, echinoderms were reported as the taxon with the highest MP occurrence after fish (93%) and the highest MP uptake after crustaceans (20.9 ± 17.4 MPs/g) (Zhang et al., 2023). In a study conducted by Barros et al. (2020), it was observed that the sea urchin Lytechinus variegatus in Todos os Santos Bay, Brazil, exhibited a preference for marine debris, with plastic accounting for 68% of the debris, over natural materials such as shells and rocks for shelter.