Using citizen science to understand floating plastic debris distribution and abundance: A case study from the North Cornish coast (United Kingdom)

• DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2023.115314
• Publication Date: 2023-07-26T11:02:26Z
• Authors: Liz Clark; Rebecca Allen; Zara L.R. Botterell; Beatriz Callejo; Brendan J. Godley; Clare Henry; David Santillo; Sarah E. Nelms
• Keywords: Waste Products; 570; Citizen Science; Microplastics; Marine debris; North Atlantic; 600; Citizen science; 01 natural sciences; United Kingdom; Nylons; Plastic pollution; UK; Plastics; Water Pollutants, Chemical; Environmental Monitoring; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Citizen science is now commonly employed to collect data on plastic pollution and is recognised as a valuable tool for furthering our understanding of the issue. Few studies, however, use citizen science to gather information on water-borne plastic debris. Here, citizen scientists adopted a globally standardised methodology to sample the sea-surface for small (1-5 mm) floating plastic debris off the Cornish coast (UK). Twenty-eight trawls were conducted along five routes, intersecting two Marine Protected Areas. Of the 509 putative plastic items, fragments were most common (64 %), then line (19 %), foam (7 %), film (6 %), and pellets (4 %). Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy identified the most common polymer type as polyethylene (31 %), then nylon (12 %), polypropylene (8 %), polyamide (5 %) and polystyrene (3 %). This study provides the first globally comparative baseline of floating plastic debris for the region (mean: 8512 items km-2), whilst contributing to an international dataset aimed at understanding plastic abundance and distribution worldwide.