Reviews in Aquaculture, 1–15 doi: 10.1111/raq.

12496

Microplastics and their potential effects on the aquaculture

systems: a critical review
Aiguo Zhou1,2,3, Yue Zhang4, Shaolin Xie1,2, Yuliang Chen1, Xiang Li3, Jun Wang1,2,5 and Jixing
Zou1,2
1 Joint Laboratory of Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Region on Marine Bioresource Conservation and Exploitation, College of Marine
Sciences, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
2 Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou, China
3 Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Charlottetown, PEI, Canada
4 Departments of Pharmacology and Pharmaceutical Sciences, School of Pharmacy, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
5 Guangxi Key Laboratory of Marine Natural Products and Combinatorial Biosynthesis Chemistry, Biophysical and Environmental Science Research
Center, Guangxi Academy of Sciences, Nanning, China

Correspondence
Jun Wang and Jixing Zou, College of Marine
Sciences, South China Agricultural University,
Guangzhou 510642, China.
Emails: wangjun2016@scau.edu.cn (J.W.);
zoujixing@scau.edu.cn (J.Z.)
Received 21 June 2020; accepted 3 August
2020.
Abstract
According to the statistics, 8.3 billion metric tonnes of plastics have been pro-
duced since 1950s, which is far more than other synthetic materials and the annual
production which are about 500 million tonnes per year at present. The produc-
tion of plastics makes microplastics pollution extremely widespread distribution,
which will have a lasting impact on the global environment, especially on the aqua-
culture systems. And the distribution of the microplastics is extremely imbalanced
around the global waters. In the present review, we have summarized the develop-
ment of aquaculture in the World and China based on the existing data sources.
And the total aquaculture production of the World will over 90 million tonnes,
which will exceed the capture production in 2020. Aquaculture products will
become one of the most important sources of high-quality protein. However, we
found that many kinds of microplastics are detected and enriched in both farmed
and captured species. Both endogenous and exogenous factors like the use of fish-
ing plastic products, factory farming facility and equipment, natural and synthetic
feed, animal health products, aquaculture fortifier and aquatic food additives make
accumulation of microplastics easier. In addition, the safety of aquaculture prod-
ucts is closely related to human health because the residues of microplastics in fish
leading to various potential hazards. In summary, this paper reviewed the relation-
ship between microplastics and aquaculture, aimed at calling for the rational and
restricted use of plastic products in the aquaculture ecosystems.
Key words: aquaculture system, human health, microplastics, pollution, sources, transport.

et al. 2019). MPs are generally considered to be plastic par-

Introduction
The number of the published articles on the MP(s) has
risen significantly in recent years, among which the rela-
tionship between MPs and the environment has drawn an
increasing global attention (Galafassi et al. 2019). Plastic
products have become a part of daily life in human beings
and an important part of the product resulted from eco-
nomic and social development, thus providing a great con-
venience but also a potential threat to human beings and
society (Spierling et al. 2018; Liu et al. 2019; Rodrigues
ticles smaller than 5 mm (Cole et al. 2011). Commonly, the
sources of MPs in the environment are from the direct
emissions of primary MPs and from degradation of the
large plastics in the environment (Wang et al. 2017), and
the destination of most MPs in the environment are the
sediments of aqueous ecosystem (Li et al. 2019; Zhao et al.
2019a) and terrestrial ecosystem (Baeza et al. 2020).
Regarding the ocean MPs, the major sources which have
been extensively studied are the decomposition of marine
plastic waste, import of land-based plastic waste, disposal

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A. Zhou et al.
of plastic waste from marine vessels, abandonment of aqua-
culture industry’s floating devices and other sources (Law
& Thompson 2014; Thompson 2015; Auta et al. 2017; Bou-
cher & Friot 2017). Regarding the freshwater MPs, how-
ever, the initial origin is still not that clear compared to
marine MPs and some experts thought that it may include
improper disposal of personal care products, synthetic tex-
tiles, industrial raw materials and the plastic waste in urban,
agricultural, tourism and the industrial areas (Wagner et al.
2014; Ding et al. 2017; Rezania et al. 2018; Fahrenfeld et al.
2019). Besides, the wear and tear of the tires during the
driving of the car, plastic dust generated by abrasion of
shoe soles, road marking materials, marine coatings are also
huge sources of MPs, and according to the statistics,
approximately 13 000 tonnes of MPs are released from all
the tires every year (James 1983; Lassen et al. 2015; Mag-
nusson et al. 2016; Boucher & Friot 2017; Kole et al. 2017).
In summary, many resources provide a hotbed for MPs
accumulation and transport from our daily life to freshwa-
ter and from freshwater to oceans.
Due to the small particle size (e.g. the range of microme-
tre size) and weak photo-degradability, the MPs are easy to
enter water and travel around the earth, which results in a
worldwide distribution of the MPs (Van Cauwenberghe &
Janssen 2014; Rillig et al. 2017; Tofa et al. 2019). The trans-
port of MPs in the environment occurs through the terres-
trial to the marine environment and through the marine
environment to the terrestrial (Wang et al. 2017; O’Connor
et al. 2019). The types and components of MPs are quite
fixed; however, their transport rules are not only related to
their own characteristics, but also closely related to the nat-
ural environment that the MPs are in contact with, the
human activities, and the socioeconomic development
(Jiang et al. 2019; Klingelh€ofer et al. 2020). And the destina-
tion of the transport of MPs is so extremely uncertain.
Hence, all of these indicated that the potential transport
capacity of MPs is inestimable.
Regarding the absorption of MPs, with the irregular dis-
posal of living and sipping garbage and any discharge from
industry and agriculture, the MPs firstly gradually invade
the soils, enter the waters, even fly into the air and then
parts of the MPs are absorbed by plant roots, especially the
aquatic plants and the edible algae. Eventually, the MPs
enter the body of animals and human beings through the
food chain, which may form a symbiotic relationship with
the microorganisms (Lu et al. 2019; Rillig et al. 2019). In
summary, a profound impact on the natural environment,
the human health and the social development exist when
the MPs transport all along the earth and absorbs into the
human beings.
All the aquatic products are inseparable from water;
especially, the aquaculture is closely related to a variety of
water sources, such as rainwater (Biswas 2019), surface and
2 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
groundwater (Ahmed & Thompson 2019), rivers and lakes
(Yuan et al. 2019), and industrial and agricultural wastewa-
ter (Adhikari & Mandal 2019). However, most of the water
sources have MPs distribution and pollution. These MPs
directly or indirectly enter the aquaculture systems and car-
ries internal and external inputs, and then enter the aquatic
product body, followed by finally enter the human bodies.
And the importance of aquaculture is address by the official
publication of ‘State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture
2018 and 2020’ (SOFIA) by the United Nations Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO; FAO 2018, 2020). This
document indicates that the importance and the historical
status of aquaculture are back in the sight of people all over
the world as well as the important fisheries and sustainabil-
ity challenges faced by our world (Pauly & Zeller 2019). In
2018, global fish production reached a peak of about
179 million tonnes, among which the total of aquaculture
production is 82 million tonnes accounts for 45.81% and
52% of fish for human consumption. Moreover, the total
production of fish from fishing and aquaculture is expected
to rise nearly 18% from the current levels to 204 million
tonnes by the year of 2030. In addition, the aquaculture will
provide a huge source of protein for the world and might
be a great contribution to solving food shortage and human
protein source crisis. For example, in the year of 2017, 17%
of the global population consumed animal protein came
from fish sources. And in terms of average per capita intake
of animal protein, 20% comes from fish in over 3.2 billion
population, and 50% or more in some countries and sev-
eral small island developing States (FAO 2020). These data
demonstrate the important role of aquatic products in the
human food supply. On the other hand, aquaculture pro-
motes reduction of poverty, hunger, and malnutrition and
improves the social, economic, and the political problems
in the developed and developing countries (Smith & Peter-
son 1982; Naylor et al. 2000; Sharma et al. 2016; Burgess &
Shier 2018; FAO 2018). Speaking of China’s aquaculture,
the production grows from 0.8 million tonnes in the year
of 1950 to about 50 million tonnes in the year of 2018,
accounting for 13.3–60.98% of the world’s aquaculture
production. Moreover, China has become the only fishery
country whose total aquaculture production exceeds the
total capture and the world’s largest fishery and aquatic
product exporter country in the world since 1988 and 2002
(Meng et al. 2007; Cao et al. 2015; Lucas et al. 2019). Mean-
while, the aquaculture area reached 7.108 million hectares
in 2019 (China Fishery Statistical Yearbook 2019) and the
aquaculture areas of maricultured and freshwater-cultured
in China from 1995 to 2019 based on the statistical data of
Chen and Zhen (1996) and China Fishery Statistical Year-
book (Bureau of Fisheries 2000 & 2005–2009) were pro-
vided in Fig. S1. Given the population of China and the
world, the per capita possession of aquatic products
Reviews in Aquaculture, 1–15
 Microplastics in aquaculture systems

obtained from aquaculture is 20.50 kg in the world, and
surprisingly, 46.28 kg in China in the year of 2018 (China
Fishery Statistical Yearbook 2019; FAO 2020). In summary,
the aquaculture is an important part of human food
sources, and the aquatic quality and safety that may contain
MPs are closely related to human health. The aquaculture
production, population distribution, export value of aqua-
tic products and per capita supply of aquatic products in
the world and in China were shown in Figure 1.
Methods
All published papers were searched using the words of ‘mi-
croplastic (MP)/microplastics (MPs)’ with ‘aquaculture
(cultured)’, ‘mariculture’, ‘farm (farming)’, ‘ponds’ from
2011 to 2019 in the main scientific publications databases
of Scopus (www.scopus.com) and Web of Science (https://
apps.webofknowledge.com/). When searching for the pub-
lications, the databases of Web of Science Core Collection,
BIOSIS Previews, KCI-Korean Journal Database,
MEDLINEâ, Russian Science Citation Index and SciELO
Citation Index were selected. In addition, we counted the
numbers of species, tissues, collection site and country,
composition, predominant, and abundance type of MPs in
maricultured shellfish, maricultured fish and shrimp, and
freshwater aquaculture species based on the scientific publi-
cations which included (De Witte et al. 2014; Mathalon &
Hill 2014; Van Cauwenberghe & Janssen 2014; Li et al.
2015; Davidson & Dudas 2016; Li et al. 2016; Su et al. 2016;
Murphy 2018; Phuong et al. 2018; Li et al., 2018a; Chan
et al. 2019; Karbalaei et al. 2019; Lv et al. 2019; Mohsen
et al. 2019; Teng et al. 2019; Zhu et al. 2019; Zhao et al.
2019b; Wu et al. 2020; Li et al. 2020a). The analysis of the
numbers of scientific publications was shown in Figure 2,
and the information regarding the MPs in maricultured
shellfish, maricultured fish and shrimp, and freshwater
aquaculture species was shown in Figure 5.
Meanwhile, the raw data of World and China population
(1950–2030) were collected from https://countrymeters.inf
o/en. Aquaculture production in the world (1950–2030),
aquaculture production in China (1980–2019), and export
value of aquatic products in China (1950–2019), per capita

Figure 1 Aquaculture production, population distribution, export value of aquatic products and per capita supply of aquaculture products in the
world and in China. (a) Is the predicted data by FAO (2020), and (b) is statistical data. ( ) World population (unit: 2 billion); ( ) Aquaculture produc-
tion in the world (unit: 20 million tonnes); ( ) Per capita supply of aquaculture products in the world (unit: 2 kg); ( ) China population (unit: 0.5 bil-
lion); ( ) Aquaculture production in China (unit: 10 million tonnes); ( ) Per capita supply of aquaculture products in China (unit: 5 kg); ( ) China
export value of aquatic products (unit: USD 5 billion).

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A. Zhou et al.
Figure 2 The number of scientific publications was selected by using
the words of microplastic (MP)/microplastics (MPs) with aquaculture
(cultured), mariculture, farm (farming), ponds from 2011 to 2019
according to Scopus (www.scopus.com) and Web of Science (https://
apps.webofknowledge.com/).
supply of aquaculture products in the world and in China
(1950–2019) are gathered through the aquaculture produc-
tion and population in the world and in China. Aquacul-
ture production in China (1950–1975) comes from
national scientific big data sharing platform for Fishery of
China.
Sources and transport of microplastics
The classification of MPs is controversial because different
classifications have no uniform standard for the MPs, the
limits of which are now the main focus when classifies
MPs. These different classification standards lead to great
uncertainty in traceability of MPs and also cause a huge
deviation in the average size of the total MPs (Barnes et al.
2009; Costa et al. 2010; Claessens et al. 2013; Galgani et al.
2013; Van Cauwenberghe et al., 2015; Rehse et al. 2016).
The initial source of MPs is not from the terrestrial
ecosystem, but in the meantime, most MPs generate from
activities in-land (de Souza Machado et al. 2018). And ter-
restrial ecosystem, as an important carrier of MPs, plays a
huge ecological role in the MPs source and transport of
water, atmosphere, flora and fauna, and microorganisms
(Rillig & Lehmann 2020; Sarker et al. 2020). Moreover, the
complexity and diversity of the soil media causes some dif-
ficulties in tracing the source of MPs which are mainly gen-
erated by human activities. The MPs are the mainly from
the point source pollution and the diffuse sources pollu-
tion, which are resulted from human activities (Horton
et al. 2017; Su et al. 2020). On one hand, the point source
pollution, as one of the important sources of soil MPs,
including factory sewage and plastic products, industrial
and washing wastewater treatment, sewage and sludge
4 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
application, and the tourism development, which are
served as the primary MPs and synthetic microfibers that
are in the land ecosystems (Zubris & Richards 2005; Chae
& An 2018). Meanwhile, air can be a carrier to transport
the plastic particles and microfibers enter the terrestrial
ecosystem through the atmospheric sedimentation (Gasperi
et al. 2015, 2018). In addition, wastewater irrigation as well
as the use of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides is the
main ways that the MPs enter farmland ecosystems and
aquaculture environment (Liu et al. 2018; Piehl et al. 2018;
Lv et al. 2019). In daily life, synthetic microfibers produced
during the laundry process, irrational discharge of catering
waste, the large use of cosmetics, and the animal and plant
metabolites are also the important sources of soil and water
MPs (Zubris & Richards 2005; Rillig 2012; Ju et al. 2019).
On the other hand, the diffuse sources pollution mainly
refers to the industrial and agricultural membranes, con-
struction of farms and buildings, sand sediment of rivers,
lakes and seas, landfills and waste disposal, and others
(Boucher & Friot 2017; Poerio et al. 2019). Lastly, in terms
of removal of MPs, although the highest removal rate of
MPs by the modern sewage treatment systems and tech-
nologies can reach as high as 99.9%, but it is largely
depended on the application of specific technologies. How-
ever, despite the removal of MPs before MPs enters the
environment, a considerable number of MPs still enters the
environment (Mintenig et al. 2017; Ren et al. 2018; Magni
et al. 2019).
The transport dynamics of MPs has not yet been clari-
fied; therefore, this area has become a hot spot but at the
same time a difficult area of research. This article starts
with the terrestrial ecosystem and explores the transport
discipline and possibilities of MPs (Fig. 3). The terrestrial
ecosystem, as the carrier of material circulation and energy
flow and as the inner loop pathway of MPs, plays a key role
in the source and transport process of soil MPs (Sarker
et al. 2020; Schell et al. 2020). MPs in the soil have been
transported several ways in the terrestrial ecosystem. Parts
of the primary MPs on the surface of the soil have been
ingested and fed by the corrosive animals (e.g. earthworms)
and then preyed by insects (e.g. ground beetle). These also
indicate that the MPs which stay inside the corrosive
organisms are very likely to flow to other animals via the
food chain and take farther away in distance with the ani-
mal’s feeding and activities and the birds’ predation and
migration. In addition, after ingested by earthworms,
grinded in their stomach sac and excreted out of body, the
plastic waste become secondary MPs which migrates to the
deeper soil (Rillig 2012; Cao et al. 2017; Rodrıguez-Seijo
et al. 2018). Another route of MPs transport in the terres-
trial ecosystem is through the secondary plastic particles,
which are also produced by the primary MPs that are chew-
ing or crushing of the mesofauna soil animal communities
Reviews in Aquaculture, 1–15

and the excavation mammal. Or that are migrated into the
deep soil (Rillig 2012; Maaß et al. 2017; Kim & An 2019).
Parts of MPs have been formed by weathered and pho-
tolyzed of plastics, which formed MPs (Ziajahromi et al.
2018; Bayo et al. 2020). Other parts of MPs enter the atmo-
sphere with wind and evaporation (Andrady 2011; Dris
et al. 2017; Gasperi et al. 2018; Abbasi et al. 2019; Zhao
et al. 2019a) and then they migrate to rivers, lakes and
other water bodies with rain washing, ice and snow melt-
ing, groundwater erosion and other weather conditions,
and the part of them will enter the aquaculture system
through rainfall (Andrady 2011; Bayo et al. 2020; Huang
et al. 2020). And some other parts of MPs act as an attach-
ment carrier for the microorganisms and enters the micro-
bial community (Eckert et al. 2018; Miao et al. 2019; Fei
et al. 2020).
In addition, a huge number of MPs directly flow into the
rivers and lakes systems without going through terrestrial
ecosystems, and these MPs eventually enter the sea system.
Together with terrestrial ecosystems, they constitute the
important transports of MPs, which is why the current
environment MPs are critical issues in the world (Backhaus
& Wagner 2018; Henderson & Green 2020). Moreover, in
order to further obtain the dynamic transport mechanism
of MPs, it is necessary to resort to environmental dynamics
and the animal behaviour models to better perform real-
time monitoring and analysis. Knowing the transport
mechanism of MPs could help us to understand the ecolog-
ical effects of the relationship between MPs and aquacul-
ture systems.
The microplastics in the aquaculture systems
The relationships between MPs and aquaculture systems
are extremely complex because of the environments of
aquaculture are variable and complex (Fig. 4). The offshore
aquaculture is vulnerable to MPs due to the developing
mariculture activities and the availability and accumulation
of MPs, which has become a threat to the survival of mari-
cultured animal species (Chen et al. 2018; Yu et al. 2020).
The sources of water-used in inland aquaculture are very
extensive, including and depending on groundwater, rivers
and lake water, spring water, coastal and sea water, rainwa-
ter, and the discharged but the treated water of daily life,
urban, agriculture and industry (Lebel et al. 2019). Not sur-
prisingly, almost all these water sources contain MPs, some
are even extremely large MPs. For example, more than
1900 fibre particles are generated into the wastewater from
laundry washing process daily (Browne et al. 2011; van der
Hal et al. 2017; Talvitie et al. 2017; Talvitie et al. 2017;
Lenaker et al. 2019; Panno et al. 2019; Cutroneo et al. 2020;
Li et al. 2020b), and the content of the MPs reaches 43 000
particles per km2 in more than 95% of detected sites in five
Reviews in Aquaculture, 1–15
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Microplastics in aquaculture systems
Great Lakes in the United States (Eriksen et al. 2013). In
the meantime, the use of fishing plastic products; pond,
cage, industrial aquaculture; feed, fish medicine, animal
protection products; and aquatic animal preservative, col-
orants, refrigerants, hardeners and acidifiers have become
the important sources of aquaculture MPs (Fig. 4). These
MPs are widely incorporated into the aquatic animals in
various ways and eventually enter the body of the human
beings. Therefore, MPs not only greatly affect the quality
and safety of the aquatic products, but also pose a potential
and lasting threat to the human health (Hollman et al.
2013; Lusher et al. 2017).
Microplastics in the aquaculture environment
The plastics are closely related to the aquaculture because
the plastics cannot be separated from any part of the fish
farming process. For example, most fishing gears are plastic
or contain plastic ingredients, such as fishing net and
bucket, breeding, hatching, cultivating devices and others
(Mohapatra et al. 2003, 2011). And there is a large amount
of plastics discharged to water. For example, the accumula-
tion of the lost/discarded fishing gears (trawls, purse seines,
Danish seines, gillnets, longline and traps/pots) were less
than 500 tonnes in 2007 but were over 4000 tonnes in 2016
in the oceans along the Norwegian commercial fishing
alone (Deshpande et al. 2020). In addition, inputs of differ-
ent kinds of external plastics also have become one of the
important sources of pollution in the aquaculture environ-
ment (Ivleva et al. 2017; Wang et al. 2020a; Fig. 4). Regard-
ing the sources of the endogenous MPs, the loss and scrap
of the fishing plastic gears and the breeding facility equip-
ment which includes plastic equipment, bait machine, aera-
tor, water pump, electric wire and others have most likely
become the main sources of the MPs in aquaculture. In
contrast, atmosphere precipitation, river, lake, sea, recre-
ational fishing and underground surface water, inflow and
soil erosion are the source for external inputs for MPs in
aquaculture (Klein & Fischer 2019; Wright et al. 2020;
Zhang et al. 2020; Wang et al. 2020b). In addition, the feeds
that include the natural and artificial feeds are another
important source of MPs in the aquaculture system
(Wright et al. 2013; Van Cauwenberghe et al. 2015). The
ingredients of the artificial compound feed are extremely
complicated, and MPs are easily brought into one or all of
their making, processing, production, transportation, stor-
age and sales processes. For example, the commercial fish
meal contains large amounts of MPs. Especially, when three
Malaysian commercial brands of fish meal were detected,
336 particles were found, among which more than 50%
were plastic polymers, a quarter was pigment particles, and
the dominant form of MPs were fragments (Karbalaei et al.
2020). This example also confirms that artificial compound
5
A. Zhou et al.

Figure 3 Sources and migration of MPs focusing on terrestrial ecosystem. The terrestrial ecosystems are divided into the point source pollution and
the diffuse source pollution. The point source pollution includes rain/atmosphere subsidence, factory sewage and plastic products, industrial and
washing wastewater treatment, sewage and sludge application, and tourism development. The diffuse source pollutant contains the industrial and
agricultural membranes, construction of farms and buildings, sand sediment of rivers, lakes and seas, landfills, and waste disposal. The MPs have sev-
eral ways of transport: parts of MPs transferred to second MPs, parts of MPs are weathered and photolyzed, parts of MPs, parts of MPs entered the
atmosphere through wind and evaporation, and parts of MPs entered in the microorganism.

like colorants feed is one of the sources of MPs. Lastly, fish
medicine and animal protection products are another
important MPs source in the aquaculture environment.
Nowadays, many kinds of chemicals and antibiotics have
become the main inputs for early aquaculture. These chem-
icals and antibiotics are adsorbed in the MPs and stays
there for a long time. Therefore, a large number of plastics
and MPs may enter to the aquaculture environment for the
purpose of the prevention and treatment of aquatic dis-
eases, improvement of aquaculture water quality and geol-
ogy, anti-stress, enhancement of aquaculture and others
(Mato et al. 2001; Koelmans et al. 2016; Li et al. 2018b). All
the above-mentioned sources of the MPs have already
posed a huge threat to the aquaculture environment, and
its potential harm and impact on aquaculture systems and
human health needs further research and verification.
Therefore, the impact of MPs on the aquaculture system
has become an important and long-term environmental
issue worldwide.
Large amounts of zooplankton and phytoplankton,
invertebrates, algae, aquatic plant, small fish that exists in
natural water act as the carriers of MPs through these

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 Microplastics in aquaculture systems

Figure 4 The relationship between microplastics and aquaculture system. The inputs of MPs have several sources, for example fishing gears, fish
plastic products, the breeding facility equipment, natural and synthetic feed, animal health products, as well as atmospheric precipitation and recre-
ational fishing. MPs can be absorbed by aquatic animals, aquatic plants and attached by aquatic microorganisms. And then the MPs follow the aqua-
tic products into the food market and could eat by human beings. In addition, river, lake, sea and underground surface, water inflow and soil erosion
can also uptake the MPs.

organisms’ feeding and adsorption. These organisms have
become natural food, which are commonly being used in
aquaculture. Some studies have recovered the high
amounts of MPs from zooplankton with the lower trophic
levels (Botterell et al. 2019; Amin et al. 2020). And the MPs
ingested by zooplankton, copepods and mussels are trans-
ferred to predators, including the filter-feeding and carniv-
orous fish (Set€al€a et al. 2016; Auta et al. 2017; Vroom et al.
2017; Mateos-Cardenas et al. 2019; Botterell et al. 2019;
Parker 2020). Moreover, the MPs provided a unique and
excellent habitat for the colonization of different microor-
ganisms in aquatic ecosystems. When the microorganisms
attach to the MPs particle, the interactions between MPs
and microorganisms considered the possible impacts on
environmental animal and human health because the MPs
were usually mistaken for the natural food by the higher
trophic levels and human being will ultimately take the
MPs at the top of the food chain (Harrison et al. 2011;
Arias-Andres et al. 2019; Lu et al. 2019; Neto et al. 2019).
Microplastics in the aquatic organisms and the aquatic
food from aquaculture
Nowadays, MPs or plastics have been found in the marine
organisms over 233 species worldwide. In contrast, for
cultured or farmed species, the researches mainly focus on
marine shellfish and bivalves species but a very few freshwa-
ter species (Cole et al. 2014; Wilcox et al. 2015; Vander-
meersch et al. 2015; Koelmans 2015; Ziajahromi et al. 2016;
Lusher et al. 2017; Lavers & Bond 2017; Carbery et al. 2018;
de Sa et al. 2018; Ma et al. 2019; Granek et al. 2020). For
example, study on the MPs from sea cucumber Aposticho-
pus japonicas in the eight farms in the Bohai Sea and the
Yellow Sea in China showed that MPs widely existed in sea
cucumber farms (Mohsen et al. 2019). In addition,
researchers also tend to compare the MPs in the wild cap-
ture with the farmed aquatic animals. For example, the
abundance of MPs ingested between the species, between
the wild and commercial fish farms, and between locations
have no significant difference when MPs content in the
stomach of one farmed and four wildly caught demersal
fish species in Hongkong (Chan et al. 2019). Another
example is that through the data analysis of 10 most caught
marine and 10 most farmed aquaculture species in 2016
(FAO 2018), the 60% of most farmed aquaculture and 80%
of most caught marine species have been showed evidences
of their capacity of ingest MP debris (Walkinshaw et al.
2020). On the other hand, the cultured filter-feed aquatic
organisms have a higher artificial control and shorter life
spans, they have relatively the opportunities of exposing

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A. Zhou et al.
the higher concentrations of MPs than the wild species
(Smith et al. 2018). For example, the MPs concentrations
of the mussels Mytilus edulis are significantly higher in
farmed mussels than wild mussels (Mathalon & Hill 2014).
Similar results were reached in three shellfish in Canada
(Murphy 2018). Another example says no significant differ-
ence of the concentrations of MP exists between the wild
and cultured Manila clams (Venerupis philippinarum;
Davidson & Dudas 2016). These indicate that the farmed
filter-feed aquatic animals are no less susceptible to MPs
than wild aquatic animals and more easily affected by the
human activities under the same culture conditions.
In addition, the MPs excessive presence in commercial
fish meal also confirms that large number of MPs is con-
tained in farmed and wild fish (Karbalaei et al. 2020).
Moreover, the above-mentioned indicates that both farmed
aquaculture and caught wild species are prone to the
enrichment of MPs and its associated risk of illness, which
may cause serious problems of food safety and cause risks
to human health (Lusher et al. 2017; Barboza et al. 2018).
In fact, MPs could act as a plasmid vector for pathogens to
increase the risk of disease in the cultured aquatic products
(Virsek et al. 2017). Lastly, MPs were also found in rice-fish
co-culture system, which is a symbiotic system based on
farmland and aquaculture, and the highest average MPs
abundances is in soil (10.3  2.2 items kg 1), followed by
the aquatic animals (1.7  0.5 items individual 1), and the
lowest is in water (0.4  0.1 items L 1), and this also indi-
cates that the MPs are potential ecological risks to the
agroecosystem (Lv et al. 2019). The MPs of aquaculture
species in marine and freshwater fish and shellfish world-
wide are shown in Figure 5.
The total amount of wild capture aquatic products in the
most countries in the world is greater than aquaculture,
except for China. But the output of cultured aquatic prod-
ucts is almost equal to that of wild capture in the world,
accounting for 46.82% of the total output (i.e. 170.94 mil-
lion tonnes) in 2016, which provides 151.24 million tonnes
of food to humans (FAO 2018). Not surprisingly, with the
growing of aquaculture product, the total aquaculture pro-
duction is expected to exceed total wild capture by 2020.
And the aquaculture for human consumption, which
accounts for 60% of the total fish consumption (FAO 2018,
2020) will far exceed capture fisheries for human consump-
tion. These data showed that there is the important status
of aquatic products in human life and social development
and close connection to human health. The MPs that exist
in aquaculture impacts human health through the food
chain. For example, in a review of valuating the MPs con-
tamination of the commercially important wild and cul-
tured marine organisms, the lower trophic levels species are
more susceptible to contaminated by MPs pollution than
top predators, and these lower trophic levels species are
8 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd
very likely to be the food sources for aquaculture. So, the
MPs eventually become aquatic food flowing to human
beings via the food chain (Walkinshaw et al. 2020). In addi-
tion, numerous types of aquatic foods including chilled,
fresh, primary and deep processed foods exist. Since MPs
exist in every single step of fish farming and processing,
large amounts of MPs will follow the aquatic foods into the
consumer market and then enter the human body, which
impacts human health slowly but lastingly. Moreover, food
additives may also act as the important sources of MPs that
enter into aquatic foods. It is reported that MPs contain on
average 4% of food additives (Rainieri & Barranco 2019).
And a high MP particle content were found in sea salt (16–
84 item kg 1), lake salt (8–102 item kg 1) and rock salt (9–
16 item kg 1; G€ undogdu 2018), even in take-out food con-
tainers (3–29 items/container; Du et al. 2020). In addition,
the food additives such as preservatives, colorants, refriger-
ants, hardeners, acidifiers and others are widely used in the
aquatic food. For example, three pigments including hae-
matite and two kinds of PB (PB 15:1 and PB 15:3) have
been detected in two commercially bivalves (M. edulis and
Crassostrea gigas) indicating that many kinds of food addi-
tives gradually migrate into aquatic animals through the
MPs (Van Cauwenberghe & Janssen 2014). This also indi-
cates that food addictive provides a great risk to the quality
and safety of the aquatic products and forming powerful
ways for MPs to enter the human beings through the food
chain. In addition, a large number of health products,
nutrition products, health supplements, beauty cosmetics,
leather products and other chemicals are packed with dif-
ferent kinds of plastic products, some of them also derived
from the deep processing of aquatic products (Hong et al.
2017; Godoy et al. 2019; Rainieri & Barranco 2019), which
may bring the MPs ‘quietly’ to human beings and has pro-
vided unimaginable potential risks to the environment and
food safety.
Despite the MPs brings the aquaculture and human
beings a huge impact, one good news is that adopting water
purification measures could effectively reduce the residue
of MPs in the wild and farmed mussels, which have impor-
tant reference for improving the aquaculture environment
and reducing the problems of food safety of MPs (Birnstiel
et al. 2019). However, incomplete removal of MPs is still an
issue. If the aquaculture areas are effectively managed and
controlled from the various sources of MPs, it will become
a key breakthrough and an inevitable way to reduce MPs,
to obtain high quality and safety of aquatic food, and to
protect people’s health.
Conclusion and perspective
The resources of MPs are extensive, which are generally
includes the point source pollution and the diffuse sources
Reviews in Aquaculture, 1–15
 Microplastics in aquaculture systems

Figure 5 The MPs of aquaculture species in the marine and freshwater fish as well as the shellfish worldwide. (a) items per gram (ww); (b) items/in-
dividual (no data means no detection). The grey frame is freshwater aquaculture species, the red frame is maricultured fish and shrimp, and the green
frame is maricultured shellfish. And the Species, tissues, collection site and country, composition, predominant, and abundance types of MPs in the
maricultured shellfish worldwide (Table S1), maricultured fish and shrimp worldwide (Table S2), and freshwater aquaculture species worldwide
(Table S3) can be found in Supporting Information.

pollution. Also, the atmosphere with wind, various fishing
gears and products, external water sources and others have
become the important input sources of MPs for aquacul-
ture system. As one of the most important carriers, the ter-
restrial ecosystem played extremely important roles of
transport and accumulation of MPs, which will enter the
aquaculture systems directly or indirectly. Meanwhile, the
soil structure will be gradually changed by MPs after a
long-term effect by MPs. And thus, these changes will have
significant impacts on aquaculture, including water envi-
ronmental factors, microbial communities and others. In
addition, the transport of MPs is also complex and diverse
in the sense that MPs migrate and circulate between differ-
ent environmental components through the transport;
therefore, it is very important to find out the migration
patterns of MPs in the different environments and the
aquaculture systems, which can also provide important
clues for the evaluation of the ecological effects, effective
treatment and the removal of MPs.
In addition, the relationship between MPs and aquacul-
ture has been drawn the extensive attention by researchers.
And the use of fishing plastic products, factory farming
facility and equipment, natural and synthetic feed, animal
health products, aquaculture fortifier and aquatic food
additives have become the important sources of aquacul-
ture MPs. The ingest and enrichment of MPs in cultured
aquatic products exist, but the influence on the aquatic
products and the potential toxicological effects are still a
mystery. The report showed that the MPs have become part
of food webs in Fildes Peninsula located in Antarctic (Ber-
gami et al. 2020), this indicated that the MPs may have
integrated into the global material cycle, including aquacul-
ture systems. Moreover, as the latest report points out, MPs
may affect carbon, nitrogen cycle and plant growth in ter-
restrial ecosystems, but the specific impact mechanism is
not yet clear (Rillig & Lehmann 2020), and whether these
effects also have effects on aquaculture systems need further
study.

Reviews in Aquaculture, 1–15

© 2020 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd 9
A. Zhou et al.
Undoubtedly, the plastics are hazardous to human health
due to their physical and chemical toxicity. Therefore, the
degraded products of plastics – MPs could potentially harm
our body. How MPs impacts human’s body after consum-
ing the aquatic products has been drawing the researchers’
attention. Hence, it is particularly important to understand
the relationship between MPs and aquaculture and its
potential impacts on the aquaculture systems, which will
enhance our understanding of the impact of MPs on
ecosystems, food safety, and public health and promote the
aquaculture farmers to effectively reduce the production
and application of plastic products to achieve the purpose
of controlling MPs entering aquaculture systems and to
develop and to use the modern ecological water treatment
technologies in order to reduce the risk of MPs being dis-
charged to the outside ecological environment.
Acknowledgements
This research was funded by the Guangdong Province
Universities and Colleges Pearl River Scholar Funded
Scheme (2018), the National Key Research and Develop-
ment Program of China (2018YFD0900604), Key Research
Projects of Universities in Guangdong Province
(2019KZDXM003 and 2020KZDZX1040), China Agricul-
ture Research System (CARS-45-50), China Scholarship
Council (201908440582), Qingyuan Science and Technol-
ogy Projects (2018A023), and Talent Introduction Special
Funds of South China Agricultural University (K16226).
Conflicts of interest
The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors
alone are responsible for the content and writing of this
article.
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Supporting Information
Additional supporting information may be found online in
the Supporting Information section at the end of the arti-
cle.
Figure S1. The aquaculture areas of maricultured and
freshwater-cultured in China from 1995 to 2019 based on
the statistical data of Chen and Zhen (1996) and China
Fishery Statistical Yearbook (Bureau of Fisheries 2000 &
2005–2019).
Table S1. Species, tissues, collection site and country,
composition, predominant, and abundance type of MPs in
the maricultured shellfish worldwide.
Table S2. Species, tissues, collection site and country,
composition, predominant and abundance type of MPs in
the maricultured fish and shrimp worldwide.
Table S3. Species, tissues, collection site and country,
composition, predominant and abundance type of MPs in
the freshwater aquaculture species worldwide.
15