Citizen science study detects vast amount of microplastics in Catalan bathing areas

The presence of microplastics in the oceans is widely documented/reported by oceanographic research, but data on the pollution in the nearshore regions are scarce due to access difficulties faced by scientific boats. Researchers from the Consolidated Research Group on Marine Geosciences of the Faculty of Earth Sciences of the UB, in collaboration with the Spanish delegation of the NGO Surfrider Foundation Europe, studied the quantity and features of floating plastics in the Catalan coasts, thanks to a citizen science initiative in which volunteers collected 25,000 microplastics with special nets towed from rowing boats. The results, published in the open-access journal Environmental Research Letters, reveal that coastal areas feature a vast amount of plastic debris, the presence of which is under a great spatial and temporal variability.