R. Alan Mason, New DENIN Fellow, Is Studying Movement of Plastics in Delaware Bay

R. Alan Mason is among five UD doctoral students recently named DENIN Environmental Fellows for 2022–2024. These highly competitive and prestigious fellowships offer financial support and professional development opportunities to students at UD whose Ph.D. research interests help bridge the gap between science and society.

Mason aims to develop analytical models to better understand what drives plastics movement in Delaware Bay. Understanding the movement of plastics through the bay will help us more efficiently remove them from the water, target beach cleanups, and stop plastics from reaching the bay in the first place.

Mason aims to develop analytical models to better understand what drives plastics movement in Delaware Bay. Understanding the movement of plastics through the bay will help us more efficiently remove them from the water, target beach cleanups, and stop plastics from reaching the bay in the first place.

Plastics in the ocean are an emerging problem. Mason explained that many of the characteristics that make plastics so useful and abundant also make them troublesome in the environment. They are lightweight and persistent—they don’t biodegrade quickly—and thus are easily carried by tides and winds.

Not much is known yet about how plastics, oil, and other debris move across the surface of Delaware Bay. There’s been research into debris movement toward the head and the mouth of the bay, but not much study of how objects move side to side around the bay.

“There’s a lot to discover,” Mason said. He’s excited that he can be a major contributor to the field. His work with his advisor, Tobias Kukulka, professor in the School of Marine Science and Policy, shows that plastics tend to aggregate into tidelines—where two currents or water masses converge—and form a patchy, irregular distribution in the bay.

Other UD researchers are studying the impact of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics, on ocean life, including the bay’s ever popular blue crabs. Mason’s research will provide important information for that work, helping those researchers determine how long aquatic organisms are exposed to plastics.

He has always been interested in the movement of water. Growing up in Kansas City, he attended a high school specializing in earth science and took a few oceanography classes. He first thought he was interested in biological oceanography, but the many dissections this involved soon taught him otherwise. Instead, he turned to physical oceanography—the movement of water and its transport of materials.

Mason’s family frequently visited relatives in Orange Beach, Alabama. On the last day of a vacation there in 2010, when he was 16, oil from the enormous Deepwater Horizon oil spill began washing onshore. Watching the clean beach become soiled was the first time he remembers being conscious of the negative impact people can have on the environment.

During his undergraduate years at Ohio State University, Mason participated in research about submarine landslides in the Gulf of Mexico.

He earned two bachelor’s degrees, in earth sciences and music education.

He still plays double bass at a church locally, and is involved with community orchestras.

Mason is president of the graduate student association for the UD School of Marine Science Policy in Newark and a member of the board of the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment graduate student association.

By: EcoWrite, LLC

Photo: Alan Mason aboard the R/V Joanne Daiber participating in an experiment to track currents and measure salinity in Delaware Bay.

Credit: Jon Cohen