Amount, composition, and spatial distribution of floating macro litter along fixed trans-border transects in the Mediterranean basin

Arcangeli, Antonella; Campana, Ilaria; Angeletti, Dario; Atzori, Fabrizio; Azzolin, M.; Carosso, Lara; Miccoli, Valentina Di; Giacoletti, Antonio; Gregorietti, Martina; Luperini, C.; Paraboschi, Miriam; Pellegrino, Giuliana; Ramazio, Martina; Sarà, Gianluca; Crosti, Roberto

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.10.028

Cited by 73 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 49 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…2), as opposed to the off-shore location of other studies reporting lower litter concentrations (e.g. Arcangeli et al, 2018). This would suggest a decreasing gradient in litter concentrations moving from coastal to off-shore waters, which is consistent with the assumption that most litter derives from land-based sources, as already demonstrated by Ryan (2015) off the coast of South Africa, but somewhat in contrast to what was recently found for floating microplastics in Mediterranean waters (Pedrotti et al, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

“…When conducting surveys from ferries for instance, the speed of the ship and the height of the observer above sea level are much greater than on research vessels or sailing boats (e.g. Arcangeli et al, 2018 andCampana et al, 2018). As a consequence, only items bigger than 20-25 cm can be effectively recorded while most smaller fragments are generally overlooked, thus explaining the observed differences in litter concentrations (85% of all objects sighted during our survey were <20 cm).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

“…Conversely -with the only notable exception of an early study by Morris (1980) -lower AML concentrations are usually reported in Mediterranean waters, with mean values ranging from 2-5 items/km 2 (e.g. McCoy, 1988;Topçu et al, 2010;Arcangeli et al, 2018; to 15-175 items/km 2 (e.g. Aliani et al, 2003;Carlson et al, 2017;Di-Méglio & Campana, 2017;Ourmieres et al, 2018;Palatinus et al, 2019).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Visual observations of floating macro litter around Italy (Mediterranean Sea)

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report the results of a visual survey of floating natural (NML) and anthropogenic (AML) macro-litter (>2.5 cm) performed in the central part of the Mediterranean Sea during a dual-use campaign onboard the Italian Navy tall ship “Amerigo Vespucci” which circumnavigated the Italian peninsula during May-June 2016. The distribution, abundance and composition of floating marine litter were assessed using a 10 m fixed-width strip transect method. Over 88 h of transect counts were performed, for a total of 168 transects, covering an overall survey length of 1026.35 km. 4756 anthropogenic litter items were counted during the transects, 96.9 % of which were classified as plastic items. Floating litter was found throughout the entire study area with densities ranging from 0 to 9205 items/km2 and with a mean abundance of 492 AML items/km2 and 77 NML items/km2 across all surveyed locations. Maximum AML densities (>3500 items/km2) were recorded in the Adriatic Sea, while the lowest densities (<50 items/km2) were found along the coastline of Sardinia and in the Strait of Messina. Our results document the ubiquitous presence of floating plastic litter around the Italian peninsula and underline the need to expand our knowledge about the main sources, transport, accumulation and fate of marine litter in the entire Mediterranean region.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 86%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 96%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Visual observations of floating macro litter around Italy (Mediterranean Sea)

et al. 2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…What stands out in every examined plot is that no area within the Pelagos Sanctuary appears to be unaffected by the potential pollution sources that have been selected in this work. Our modeling results are in a rather good agreement with the observational data of plastic pollution based on sampling procedures by Suaria et al (2016), Fossi et al (2017), and Arcangeli et al (2017), except for a high-density area that the latter found in the Bonifacio strait, not reproduced by the present elaborations. We note that this region is relatively poorly resolved in the oceanographic circulation reanalyses we exploited.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 88%

Modeling Plastics Exposure for the Marine Biota: Risk Maps for Fin Whales in the Pelagos Sanctuary (North-Western Mediterranean)

2019

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Several anthropogenic stressors threaten the Mediterranean basin, which is currently regarded as one of the most impacted marine ecoregions globally. Among those stressors, marine plastic litter is causing increasing concern about its environmental and biological consequences, the latter being largely unknown. To improve the understanding of these aspects, here we provide a mapped indicator of the risk of plastic ingestion by the fin whale Balaenoptera physalus, an endangered cetacean whose feeding grounds are located within the Pelagos Sanctuary for Mediterranean Marine Mammals, in the northwestern Mediterranean Sea. We analyse a decade (2000-2010) of advection patterns of marine plastic litter, modeled as Lagrangian particles and released from the three major sources: untreated waste along coasts, plastic discharged from rivers and along maritime shipping routes. Risk of exposure to microplastics via food ingestion for fin whales is then evaluated by interlacing the plastic litter distribution obtained via particle tracking with maps of habitat suitability based on bathymetry and satellite-derived estimates of chlorophyll-a. Our modeling results locate the highest risk values in the Central Ligurian Sea, and show that all the three main sources of plastic litter taken into account clearly contribute to impacting cetaceans in the Sanctuary, yet with spatial and interannual variability of patterns. The procedure formalized with our approach can be extended to assess the risk caused by ingestion of plastics by other taxa and/or in other MPAs, as we suggest by providing an application on the whole ecosystem of Pelagos, thus informing targeted actions to tackle the complex issue of marine litter.

show abstract

“…Despite differences among floating items observed in the Rhone River and top items found in beaches and floating at sea in the Mediterranean region, there is coherence in the high percentage of plastic items composing the marine litter (Table S2, SI). Furthermore, these top items lists included SUP items such as bottles or bags within the most frequent items (Addamo et al, 2017;Arcangeli et al, 2018;Di-Meglio and Campana, 2017).…”

Section: Macro-litter Abundance and Plastic Loadingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Macro-litter in surface waters from the Rhone River: Plastic pollution and loading to the NW Mediterranean Sea

Castro-Jiménez

González-Fernández

Fornier

et al. 2019

Marine Pollution Bulletin

159

105

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We present here the first estimates of floating macro-litter in surface waters from the Rhone River, based on monthly visual observations during 1-year period (2016-2017). Plastic represented 77% of the identified items, confirming its predominance in riverine floating litter. Fragments (2.5-50 cm) and Single Use Plastics (i.e. bags, bottles and cover/packaging) were among the most abundant items. Frequent non-plastic floating litter were paper items such as packaging material and newspapers, and metal items (mostly cans), representing 14% and 5% of total litter, respectively. A lower-end estimate resulted in ∼223,000 plastic items (∼0.7 t of plastic) transported annually by the Rhone surface waters to the Gulf of Lion (NW Mediterranean Sea). Floating macroplastics are only a fraction of the total plastic export by the Rhone. Our study highlights the current discrepancy between field observations and theoretical estimations. Improvements are needed to harmonize data collection methodologies for field studies and model validation.

show abstract

Amount, composition, and spatial distribution of floating macro litter along fixed trans-border transects in the Mediterranean basin

Cited by 73 publications

References 49 publications

Visual observations of floating macro litter around Italy (Mediterranean Sea)

Visual observations of floating macro litter around Italy (Mediterranean Sea)

Modeling Plastics Exposure for the Marine Biota: Risk Maps for Fin Whales in the Pelagos Sanctuary (North-Western Mediterranean)

Macro-litter in surface waters from the Rhone River: Plastic pollution and loading to the NW Mediterranean Sea

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About