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Using citizen science to understand floating plastic debris distribution and abundance: A case study from the North Cornish coast (United Kingdom).
Summary
This citizen science study used a standardized methodology to monitor floating plastic debris off the Cornish coast of the UK, finding microplastic concentrations comparable to or higher than other European coastal regions. The study demonstrates that citizen science can generate useful, standardized data on plastic pollution in coastal waters.
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), whilst contributing to an international dataset aimed at understanding plastic abundance and distribution worldwide.