The collections of the natural history museum and microplastics

After completing a two-year technical degree in Biotechnology, Valentin Dettling earned a Master's degree in Biosciences from the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Lyon (specializing in immunology, neuroscience, and microbiology).

He is currently in his final year of doctoral studies at the National Museum of Natural History (within the ISYEB and PhyMA research units), where he is studying the contamination of marine organisms by microplastics.

He is also a member of the Scientists’ Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty.

Summary of speech

Sea cucumbers are organisms found at all depths and latitudes. The vast majority of sea cucumber species feed by ingesting several dozen kg of sediment per individual per year. The seabed is impacted by human activities, particularly the microplastics that can accumulate there. We therefore hypothesized that sea cucumbers could be relevant organisms for monitoring the evolution of microplastic pollution. To this end, we developed a method for extracting and quantifying microplastics from sea cucumbers using pyrolysis-gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (Py-GC-MS). We have also identified time series for two holothurian species from the New Caledonian natural history collection of the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris, sampled between 1985 and the present day. Around forty specimens will be analyzed to model temporal trends for both species.