1. Marine litter worldwide
• Sources, pathways and sinks
• Wildlife interactions
2. Marine litter in the Arctic
• Origins, pathways and amounts:
• Sea surface
• Sea ice and snow
• Deep sea
• Beaches
• Impact on arctic wildlife
• Regional information:
• Svalbard
• Greenland
• Canadian Arctic
• Iceland
• Ongoing efforts and how you can help
• Most debris found on beaches is fisheries-related.
• Household waste items mostly of sea-based origin (fisheries and tourism)
• Microplastic input from Ny Ålesund decreased by 99% after implementation of wastewater treatment.
• No wastewater treatment in Longyearbyen: estimated input of about 18 billion microfibers per year.
• West Greenland: single-use plastics are most common.
• East Greenland: fishing related litter is most common.
• About 40% of Northern fulmars in West Greenland have ingested microplastic compared to about 10% in Northeast Greenland.
• Near Nuuk, microplastics have been detected in water samples between inner fjord and fjord mouth.
• Surface feeding sea birds (Northern fulmars and kittiwakes) ingest microplastics.
• In Eastern Canadian Arctic, 90% of water and zooplankton samples, and 85% of sediment samples contained microplastics.
• Inuit «Community Monitoring of Plastic Pollution in Nunatsiavut» included:
• LADI — Low-tech Aquatic Debris
Instrument for surface water sampling
• BabyLegs — DIY citizen science surface water sampling device made from baby tights
• Litter densities on the sea floor around Iceland average 872 items per km2, highest concentration 5,096 per km2.
• 94% of waste is fisheries-related (longlines and trawl nets are commonly entangled with corals and rocks).
• Wastewater treatment plant in Reykjavik emitted 6 million microliter particles per hour into the ocean.
• Microplastic found in drinking water in Akureyri.
• Microplastic have been found on Icelandic glacier.
• Fin whales feeding off western Iceland ingest approximately tens of thousands microplastic particles daily with their prey Northern krill.
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