« Marine litter (or debris) is one of the present day’s greatest threats to the world’s oceans. A staggering 8–13 million tons of plastic waste is estimated to enter our oceans annually due to waste mismanagement on land. »

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« As most plastics are estimated to take centuries to degrade, plastic pollution in the oceans continues to increase. It has been estimated that over five trillion pieces of plastic weighing over 250,000 tons are afloat in the world’s oceans today; an estimate which does not consider litter that has sunk to the ocean floor or been washed ashore along coastlines, which is the fate of most marine debris. »

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« The ecological impacts of these staggering amounts of marine plastic litter are believed to be substantial across all trophic levels as organisms are entangled in or ingest litter. »

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« Marine litter has been identified as one of the 11 descriptors of the European Union’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). »

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« The density of marine litter afloat is generally low; the majority of debris sinks to the ocean floor. The highest concentration of floating litter documented in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 60 kg km−2, but with an average of only 0.75 kg km−2 estimated globally and accounting for a meagre 1% of marine debris. »

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« A decrease in the annual influx of litter into the oceans will be critical to combating the problem, yet efforts to reduce litter already present in the oceans are also paramount. To achieve the latter, the first step is understanding where and how marine litter accumulates and how to optimise clean-up efforts. »

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« The identification of factors driving the deposition of plastic litter in the marine environment and where these factors result in high concentrations of litter, has been acknowledged as one of the key research questions in the field. »

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Sources

A novel GIS-based tool for predicting coastal litter accumulation and optimising coastal cleanup actions

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