Abundance and composition of floating marine macro litter on the eastern sector of the Mediterranean Sea

Visual observations of floating macro litter around Italy (Mediterranean Sea)

“…AML densities found in our study (mean value 492 items/km 2 ; max: 9205 items/km 2 ) are in accordance with the abundance of floating objects observed in the Strait of Malacca (Ryan, 2013b), in Indonesian waters (Uneputty & Evans, 1997) and in the Northwest Pacific (Titmus & Hyrenbach, 2011), where very high AML concentrations, often exceeding 4000-6000 items/km 2 were found, as well as with some noticeably high values recently reported from the Adriatic Sea (Zeri et al, 2018) and from the Eastern Mediterranean basin (Constantino et al, 2019). Conversely -with the only notable exception of an early study by Morris (1980) -lower AML concentrations are usually reported in Mediterranean waters, with mean values ranging from 2-5 items/km 2 (e.g.…”

“…Derraik, 2002;Thiel et al, 2003;Gregory, 2009;Hinojosa & Thiel, 2009;Titmus & Hyrenbach, 2011;Ryan, 2013a. ), as well as from the Mediterranean Sea (Galgani et al, 2010;Pasquini et al, 2016;Vlachogianni et al, 2018;Zeri et al, 2018;Constantino et al, 2019;Palatinus et al, 2019), consistently reporting the prevalence of plastic (accounting for more than 70%, sometimes up to 90-100%) in floating, benthic and beach litter. Most of the plastic items observed during our survey were categorized as irregular plastic fragments, suggesting a secondary origin of these items, probably derived from the fragmentation of larger objects.…”

Microplastics pollution along the Lebanese coast (Eastern Mediterranean Basin): Occurrence in surface water, sediments and biota samples

“…The Eastern Mediterranean has been reported for its high contamination of floating plastic debris with a dominance of small fragments < 2.5 cm in comparison to the Western part (Cózar et al, 2015). High fluxes of plastic debris (10-30 kg/km.day) were observed along the Levantine Basin coast from Egypt, Lebanon, Syria and Turkey (Constantino et al, 2019). Differences between the two parts of the Mediterranean Sea can be explained by the different circulation patterns: water currents in the Western part promote circulation; whereas currents in the Eastern part are somewhat attractors leading to the accumulation of floating debris (Mansui et al, 2015).…”

Floating Marine Litter in Eastern Mediterranean From Macro to Microplastics: The Lebanese Coastal Area as a Case Study

“…Floating macroplastics have been recognized as an ecological problem of global concern (Lebreton et al, 2018); however, knowledge regarding the abundance and distribution of floating objects in the Eastern Mediterranean is still limited compared to the substantial number of studies available for the Central and Western Mediterranean areas (Suaria and Aliani, 2014;Di-Méglio and Campana, 2017;Arcangeli et al, 2018;Constantino et al, 2019). Lebanon leaks into the sea a total of 3,321 tonnes/year of macroplastics compared to neighboring countries like Egypt (74,031 tonnes/year), Turkey (23,966 tonnes/ year) and Cyprus (332 tonnes/year) (Boucher and Bilard, 2020).…”

“…In fact, the Eastern Mediterranean presented a high infestation of MPs (specifically small fragments) compared to the Western Mediterranean (Cózar et al, 2015). Grand fluxes of MPs (10-30 kg/km/day) were observed along the Levantine sub-basin coasts from Egypt to Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey (Constantino et al, 2019). The differences between the Eastern and Western Mediterranean basins are due to different circulation patterns: water currents in the Eastern Mediterranean play the role of attractors leading to the accumulation of MPs, while the currents in the Western Mediterranean promote circulation (Mansui et al, 2015).…”