Picture this: It’s a warm, spring day in May 2021. You are at a local seafood restaurant overlooking the Chesapeake Bay and your order of raw oysters arrives delicately placed on a layer of ice. Your waiter reviews the type of oysters you ordered. He says, “Running clockwise, you have Pemaquid, Blue Point, and PEI.” Before the waiter steps away, he asks, “Would you like extra microplastics added to your oysters?” Dumbfounded, you reply, “Extra?”

This Twilight Zone-like scenario is not totally fictional. Oysters are a keystone species in the environment, meaning they are the backbone of ecosystems. They are heroes in a small shell. In addition to where they sit on the food chain, oysters can filter up to 50 gallons of water per day, cleaning the surrounding water of chemicals and pollutants. However, this means they inevitably suck up more than they bargained for. Scientists have discovered that oysters contain microplastics, plastic pieces that measure less than 5 mm in size in one dimension (similar to the size of a sesame seed). Oysters suck in microplastics and, sometimes, they never pass them out.