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Abstract
Weathering processes typically restrict the distance spilled oil travels in the ocean to a few hundred kilometers. Leveraging oiled marine debris as “drifters of opportunity”, we tested the hypothesis of the unprecedented long-range (thousands of kilometers) transequatorial transport of oil adhered to marine debris by surface currents. Physical oceanographic modeling provided the plausibility for this hypothesis, and molecular forensics provided the definitive evidence supporting it. Oil carried by marine debris arriving at Palm Beach, Florida in 2020 matched oil from the 2019 Brazil mystery oil spill, having traveled ~8,500 km in ~240 days. We demonstrate an additive contaminant effect whereby plastic pollution facilitates the long-range transport of oil pollution. These findings underscore that regional inputs into the global ocean can have transboundary impacts.
Supplementary materials
Title
Supporting Information
Description
historical drifter experiments (Section S1); discussion of sample shared thermal history
(Section S2); discussion of PAH diagnostic ratios (Section S3); photos of oiled debris in the
field (Figure S1); photos of oiled debris samples (Figure S2); GC-FID chromatograms (Figure
S3); saturated hydrocarbon distributions (Figure S4); PAH distributions (Figure S5); GC×GC-
FID chromatograms (Figure S6); GC×GC-FID chromatograms of FOPB-03 (Figure S7);
modeling of oil weathering (Figures S8-S12); PAH diagnostic ratios (Figure S13); GC×GC-
HRT extracted ion chromatograms (Figures S14-S17); sample information (Table S1);
analyses performed for each sample (Table S2); saturated hydrocarbon contents (Table S3);
PAH contents (Table S4); petroleum biomarker contents (Table S5); additional references
(PDF).
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