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Sea surface surveys for microplastic and floating marine macro litter items in coastal waters of Cabrera Archipelago Maritime Terrestrial National Park
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Net surveys around the Cabrera Archipelago National Park in the Balearic Islands found enormous quantities of microplastics — averaging over 380,000 particles per square kilometer — with polyethylene and polypropylene making up 98% of the material. Even this protected marine area showed high contamination, and smaller survey vessels were far better at capturing the smallest size fractions than larger research ships used in comparable studies. The findings establish a pollution baseline for one of the Mediterranean's few marine protected areas and demonstrate that legal protection from human activity does not shield coastal waters from microplastic drift.
This study is aimed at identifying and comparing microplastics and floating marine litter along the sea surface in the marine protected area of Cabrera Archipelago Maritime Terrestrial National Park (Cabrera MPA) in the Balearic Islands. A total of 52 net surveys and 22 visual surveys were carried out between July and August in 2019 and 2020. The abundance of microplastic (MP) items was highest in the southern and eastern regions, with an average of 381,244.4 ± 1,031,082.8 items/km weighing an average of 927.1 ± 2731.4 g/km. Most of these items were < 5 mm (81%) in size and were mainly composed of polyethylene and polypropylene (98%). In terms of floating marine macro litter (ML) from visual surveys, an average of 2028 ± 2084 items/km were observed. In this case, the majority of the ML items were plastic pieces (69%) measuring 2.5 to 50 cm. Furthermore, ML quantified by visual surveys was an order of magnitude higher than in similar studies carried out on large vessels, highlighting the importance of vessel height and speed for identifying the smallest size fractions (81%). The results of this study document the intensity of MPs and ML, primarily plastic, in coastal waters, and provide a baseline for management efforts to mitigate floating litter, in addition to raising awareness of the transferability of marine litter from other regions.
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