By Mark Muckenfuss

Alyssa Anzalone had to distill two years of research into a three-minute presentation that could be understood by almost anyone. The Cal State Monterey environmental science master’s candidate was competing in the annual Grad Slam, facing off against students from throughout the CSU system. And she won.

Anzalone’s May 3 presentation was voted the best among her peers by a Zoom-based audience and a panel of judges. She is the first student from CSUMB to place in the contest, which began in 2021. Her research is on the presence of microplastics in waterways in the Monterey region. The title of her presentation was “Understanding the Risk of Microplastics in the Pajaro and San Lorenzo Rivers.” 

She said she was impressed by the quality of the work presented. 

“I thought all of the research was really good,” Anzalone said. “I was a little surprised when they told me I had won.”

She said she thinks her ability to present complex information in a simple way, along with some good maps and slides allowed her to stand out. 

The presentation represented only a small part of her research.

“For my broader master's thesis, I am analyzing microplastics in freshwater ecosystems, like rivers, that flow into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary,” she said. “I am assessing their abundance, polymer types (what they are made of), and risk to wildlife.”

She also looked at the levels of microplastics in the waters flowing into Monterey Bay from a number of different rivers. Some were better than others. 

“I found that the Pajaro and San Lorenzo rivers have relatively low microplastic abundances,” she said. “However, there is a ton of federally protected species in the rivers and downstream. Microplastics have the capacity to harm these species, so we need to keep these levels low.”

Anzalone earned a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies and biology at UC Santa Cruz before coming to CSUMB. She chose to work on her master’s degree here with her advisor John Olson, she said, because of the unique local environment and because the program provides a lot of technical training not available at other universities. 

She plans to continue the same line of research and pursue a PhD in 2025. In the meantime she will be investigating microplastics as an intern with Matt Savoka at Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station with the California Marine Sanctuary Foundation.

She’s hoping to make an impact on what she sees as a major threat to human health. Eventually, she wants to work with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine debris program and investigate, among other things, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. 

“Microplastics are pretty much everywhere,” she said. “If you think about soil, air and water, they’re in all these environmental media. That is really really bad because microplastics can cause health problems in humans and other organisms.”

The more she investigates, the more concerned she becomes.

“More and more every day, I’m concerned about microplastics,” she said. “When I look at my samples, I am always shocked by how many microplastics I recover. Every day I’m a little more concerned about it. But the more concerned we are, the more we can do about this issue.”