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The weather is gloomy, even by seasonal Vancouver standards.Dark clouds scud low overhead, a flash of torrential rain pelts down, and a hundred crows swirl around like black leaves scattered by the wind.

The waters lapping Sunset Beach in Vancouver’s West End, however, seem gin-clear and pristine. A mere illusion, it turns out.

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Peter Ross, a marine researcher, wades in with gumboots and scoops up samples of surface water to be tested for tiny plastics, then pours them through sieves with the help of his lab manager, Megane Neauport.

Microplastics are considered to be smaller than five millimetres.

Ross’s lab can measure much smaller particles, down to about five microns — 5/1,000th of a millimetre — but it cannot capture nanoplastics, which are generally considered to be about one micron or smaller.

Microplastics are found throughout the world’s oceans, including both poles, but this is the first time Ross has tested — at the request of Postmedia News — a popular swimming beach in Vancouver’s backyard. It’s a way to bring home the seriousness of the microplastics problem.