Since October 2019, EMODnet Chemistry has been collecting, harmonising and validating marine litter data. Five European monitoring and research centres, and four NGOs submitted their datasets through the EMODnet Ingestion Portal. Once elaborated, the data are included in the database maintained by the National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) at the National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics (OGS).
Time range of the different datasets stretches from one to five years and covers the period 2013-2020. The datasets come from 8 countries bordering the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea: Estonia (TalTech), Latvia (LHEI), Bulgaria (BGODC), Romania (Mare Nostrum), Slovenia (NIB), Croatia (IZOR), Turkey (TUDAV) and Cyprus (ORION). Marine litter composition and abundance were defined in sediments, mostly coastal deposits, well known as beach litter, by means of visual census methodologies. A Croatian dataset comes from seafloor samples collected by trawling.
The main challenge achieved via the work of EMODnet Chemistry in collaboration with the EC Joint Research Centre and the MSFD Technical Group on Marine Litter was to develop standard formats, based on existing best practices set out by consolidated communities and on European recommendations.
Standardisation enables to compare marine litter data collected with many different methodologies by numbers of data sources. EMODnet Chemistry works in strict cooperation with the NODCs and the Member States to produce validated data collections at a European scale. Besides MSFD monitoring data, EMODnet Chemistry also manages, stores and gives access to marine litter data from both research surveys and monitoring or cleaning initiatives of citizen science.
