@misc{10498/29557,
year = {2021},
month = {6},
url = {http://hdl.handle.net/10498/29557},
abstract = {The surge of research on marine litter is generating important information on its inputs, distribution and impacts, but data on the nature and origin of the litter remain scattered. Here, we harmonize worldwide litter-type inventories across seven major aquatic environments and find that a set of plastic items from take-out food and beverages largely dominates global litter, followed by those resulting from fishing activities. Compositional differences between environments point to a trend for litter to be trapped in nearshore areas so that land-sourced plastic is released to the open ocean, predominantly as small plastic fragments. The world differences in the composition of the nearshore litter sink reflected socioeconomic drivers, with a reduced relative weight of single-use items in high-income countries. Overall, this study helps inform urgently needed actions to manage the production, use and fate of the most polluting human-made items on our planet, but the challenge remains substantial.

Data on marine litter are scattered. Harmonizing worldwide aquatic litter inventories, this study finds global litter dominated by plastics from take-out food, followed by fishing, with litter being trapped in nearshore areas and land-sourced plastic reaching the open ocean mostly as small fragments.},
publisher = {NATURE PORTFOLIO},
title = {An inshore-offshore sorting system revealed from global classification of ocean litter},
doi = {10.1038/s41893-021-00720-8},
author = {Morales Caselles, María del Carmen and Viejo Marín, Josué and Martí Morales, Elisa and González Fernández, Daniel and Pragnell-Raasch, Hannah and González Gordillo, Juan Ignacio and Montero, Enrique and Muñoz Arroyo, Gonzalo and Hanke, Georg and Salvo, Vanessa S. and Basurko, Oihane C. and Mallos, Nicholas and Lebreton, Laurent and Echevarría Navas, Fidel María and van Emmerik, Tim and Duarte, Carlos M. and Gálvez Lorente, José Ángel and van Sebille, Erik and Galgani, François and García Jiménez, Carlos Manuel and Ross, Peter S. and Bartual Magro, Ana and Ioakeimidis, Christos and Markalain, Gorka and Isobe, Atsuhiko and Cózar Cabañas, Andrés},
}