Abstract
Growing evidence suggests that anthropogenic litter, particularly plastic, represents a highly pervasive and persistent threat to global marine ecosystems. Multinational research is progressing to characterise its sources, distribution and abundance so that interventions aimed at reducing future inputs and clearing extant litter can be developed. Citizen science projects, whereby members of the public gather information, offer a low-cost method of collecting large volumes of data with considerable temporal and spatial coverage. Furthermore, such projects raise awareness of environmental issues and can lead to positive changes in behaviours and attitudes. We present data collected over a decade (2005-2014 inclusive) by Marine Conservation Society (MCS) volunteers during beach litter surveys carried along the British coastline, with the aim of increasing knowledge on the composition, spatial distribution and temporal trends of coastal debris. Unlike many citizen science projects, the MCS beach litter survey programme gathers information on the number of volunteers, duration of surveys and distances covered. This comprehensive information provides an opportunity to standardise data for variation in sampling effort among surveys, enhancing the value of outputs and robustness of findings. We found that plastic is the main constituent of anthropogenic litter on British beaches and the majority of traceable items originate from land-based sources, such as public littering. We identify the coast of the Western English Channel and Celtic Sea as experiencing the highest relative litter levels. Increasing trends over the 10-year time period were detected for a number of individual item categories, yet no statistically significant change in total (effort-corrected) litter was detected. We discuss the limitations of the dataset and make recommendations for future work. The study demonstrates the value of citizen science data in providing insights that would otherwise not be possible due to logistical and financial constraints of running government-funded sampling programmes on such large scales.
Highlights
Pollution of the marine environment by anthropogenic litter is widely acknowledged as a significant global environmental issue requiring mitigation (Cole et al, 2011; Derraik, 2002; Vegter et al, 2014)
2.2 Beach litter surveys Data on marine anthropogenic litter were collected by Marine Conservation Society (MCS) volunteers between January 2005 and December 2014 from 736 beaches located throughout Britain, in England, Scotland and Wales
3.1 Descriptive statistics Anthropogenic litter was recorded during all beach litter surveys (n = 3245) and a total of 2,376,541 items were collected from 1,402 km of cumulative surveyed coastline, with volunteers contributing 73,167 hours (equivalent to ~25 years of continuous surveying (365 days a year) by a single person working eight hours per day)
Summary
Pollution of the marine environment by anthropogenic litter is widely acknowledged as a significant global environmental issue requiring mitigation (Cole et al, 2011; Derraik, 2002; Vegter et al, 2014). Items from land-based sources originate from domestic, industrial and agricultural activities (UNEP, 2009) and may enter the marine environment via a variety of pathways, including public littering, fly-tipping and poor waste management (Hastings and Potts, 2013; UNEP, 2009), transported to the sea by rivers, sewage outflows and wind (Duckett and Repaci, 2015; Galgani et al, 2013; Poeta et al, 2014; Rech et al, 2014) Anthropogenic factors, such as proximity to areas of high population density, degree of fishing effort and concentration of shipping traffic, are likely to affect the abundance and distribution of debris (Duckett and Repaci, 2015; Hoellein et al, 2015; Moriarty et al, 2016; Ribic et al, 2012). Environmental factors, such as wind, tides, currents and coastal morphology, are influential in the distribution and accumulation of marine anthropogenic litter (Critchell et al, 2015), but are complex and their precise effects are difficult to disentangle (Browne et al, 2015)
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