Abstract
This article analyzes the abundance and composition of marine litter in the Gulf of Sant Jordi (Catalonia, Spain). Marine litter was removed from the sea by a fishing trawler operating from the port of L’Ametlla de Mar; 56 hauls were performed between July and September 2018. The marine litter was classified following UNEP/IOC Guidelines on Survey and Monitoring of Marine Litter and EU MSFD Technical Group on Marine Litter Joint List, with a total of 2691 items collected and an average number by haul of 48 (SD 28.24). The density was 130 items km−2 but with significant differences according to trawling depth: 192 items km−2 (≤100 m) and 71.5 items km−2 (>100 m). As expected, plastic was the most commonly found material, comprising almost 80% of the total. The relative presence of plastics declined as trawling depth increased. An alarmingly high amount of sanitary waste was found. Further studies are necessary to compare summer results with those of smaller seasonal populations and to analyze what happens to sanitary waste.
Highlights
The Gulf of Sant Jordi is located in the Western Mediterranean Sea, just off the southern coast of Catalonia (Figure 1)
The aims of this study have been met in that we determined the abundance of marine litter removed from the seafloor and characterized it according to seven different materials and their main typologies, thereby contributing to filling the existing gap on the subject of marine litter in the Gulf of Sant Jordi, an area of the Western Mediterranean Sea that has been scarcely analyzed
The amount of marine litter found in the Gulf of Sant Jordi in the present study can be considered moderate compared to the findings of existing literature on the entire Mediterranean Sea
Summary
One of the characteristics of modern production and consumption patterns is the generation of waste, a part of which ends up in oceans and seas, becoming marine litter [1,2]. The presence of marine litter in seas and oceans damages marine ecosystems [9,10,11,12]. It affects various socioeconomic activities such as tourism, fishing, and sailing [13,14] as well as public health through the introduction of microplastics into food chains [15,16]. The same report concludes that ‘evidence is limited, and the situation could change if pollution continues at the current rate’
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