Monitoring macro & micro plastic in Pelagos Sanctuary: a citizenscience successful approach

Abstract

SEACleanerII is the present follow up of the SEACleaner citizenscience project (2014-2016) implemented by CNR-ISMAR in collaboration with other Research and Organization Centers (DLTM, INGV), 5 Regional/National Parks in South Liguria and North Tuscany, and many associations School Institutions. The project’s aim is to collect data on the type, distribution and principal pollution sources of macro and micro “Anthropogenic Marine Debries” (AMDs) on several beaches in a vast area belonging to the Pelagos Mammals Santuary. SEACleaner takes advantage of the ministerial program Alternanza Scuola-Lavoro to involve hundreds of secondary school students. Strong collaborations and synergies have been activated with other citizenscience projects focused on biological surveys, through Reef Check Protocol MAC-e, in the same selected areas. Results were made public by means of scientific publications (also for generic public), a master thesis and trough the documentary “MARINE RUBBISH. A challenge to share” distributed by CNR-WEB TV, realized for the 10th of Researchers Night in Bruxell in 2015, and presented in various national and international Environmental Film Festival. In 2016 the network has been extended to ENEA-UTMAR of La Spezia. SEACleanerII focuses on microplastics which represent a major problem for marine mammals in the considered area. It provides data collected during repeated campaigns at the same georeferenced stations, with seasonal time lapse. Compared to the previous project, the survey is restricted to marine high protected areas and to some neighboring urban beaches, in order to compare situations that differ for anthropization, tourist exploitation, cleaning beach actions etc. Here we present some preliminary results of the last year of microplastic collection and a brief review of past SEACleaner results.