We all know that plastic pollution in the Mediterranean Sea puts in a considerable risk to ecosystems and human health, and causes negative economic impacts on coastal communities. But do you know how these plastics move on the surface of the Mediterranean Sea and which is their final destination?
In a study carried out in the framework of the AMAre project by researchers from the Euro-Mediterranean Climate Change Centre (CMCC), more than 10,000 million virtual particles have been tracked to understand the transport and destination of plastic waste in the Mediterranean, from anthropogenic sources (coastal populations, rivers and shipping routes) to environmental destinations (sea surface, coasts and seabed).
The movements of plastic particles on the sea surface have been defined thanks to data provided by the Copernicus Marine Environmental Monitoring Service (CMEMS). A joint initiative of the European Commission and the European Space Agency, the CMEMS uses Sentinel satellites to observe the environment and better understand environmental changes.
Figure: Plastic flow on the surface, click here to see the animation of the plastic flow from 2013 to 2017.
Figure: Areas of plastic concentration on the surface.
Plastics accumulate mainly on the coast and in the seabed. In this sense, the study has concluded that the most plastic-polluted areas are the Cilician sub-basin in Turkey, the Catalan coast in Spain, the Po River delta and the Venice lagoon in Italy. In contrast, the Aegean Sea and the costs of the Balkans have been identified as low contaminated areas.
Link to the scientific article: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0025326X18301000#!
Link to Copernicus Service: https://marine.copernicus.eu/
