Using citizen science to understand floating plastic debris distribution and abundance: A case study from the North Cornish coast (United Kingdom)

Abstract

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−2), whilst contributing to an international dataset aimed at understanding plastic abundance and distribution worldwide.