By: Tyler Treadway, Treasure Coast Newspapers
ST. LUCIE COUNTY — Susan Hamburger rinses a one-liter jar in Ten-Mile Creek once, twice, three times before holding it just below the surface long enough to fill it.
The water in the jar is nearly crystal clear. No scummy blue-green algae. No black-mayonnaise muck.
But Hamburger and about a dozen other volunteers along the Treasure Coast are looking for pollution that's nearly invisible: bits of plastic less than an eighth of an inch, appropriately known as microplastics.
Chances are they'll find some.
Plastics were found at 16 of the 18 sites along the Treasure Coast sampled by volunteers with the Florida Microplastic Awareness Project so far this year…