Date (Creation)

2021-12-15

Date (Revision)

Date (Publication)

2022-01-20

Date (Publication)

2022-01-26

Citation identifier

d7601ae4-46bc-4f1a-b2c6-863e25e3570d

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
GEOMAR Research Centre for Marine Geosciences		inapplicable	Originator of Dataset
National Institute of Oceanography and Applied Geophysics - OGS, Division of Oceanography		nodc@ogs.it	Author

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

• Oceanographic geographical features

SeaVoX salt and fresh water body gazetteer

• Baltic Sea
• Mediterranean Sea
• Atlantic Ocean

SeaDataNet Agreed Parameter Groups

• PCBs and organic micropollutants

SeaDataNet device categories

• sieves and filters

SeaVoX Device Catalogue

• SubCtech OceanPack RACE 5th generation {FerryBox} combined pCO2 analyser and microplastics sampler

SeaDataNet Parameter Discovery Vocabulary

• Micro-litter in water bodies

SeaVoX Platform Categories

• self-propelled boat

MEDIN data format categories

• Text or Plaintext

Keywords

Access constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

no limitations to public access

Use limitation

Conditions for access and use apply

Use constraints

Other restrictions

Other constraints

CC BY-SA 4.0

Language

English

Character set

UTF8

Topic category

• Oceans

Begin date

2021-05-09

End date

2021-06-15

Supplemental Information

Map of the microplastic measurement, histogram of average microplastic concentrations and colors, see also https://sites.google.com/ext.theoceanrace.com/the-ocean-race-science

Unique resource identifier

WGS 1984

Distribution format

Name	Version
Text or Plaintext	1

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download	https://cloud.emodnet-ingestion.eu/index.php/s/eTLLX8dS2XMOyJP
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	https://cdi-chemistry.seadatanet.org/search/welcome.php?query=1974&query_code={40DDC8F8-A2D8-4A13-9BE7-858B413019F7}
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--link	https://cdi.seadatanet.org/search/welcome.php?query=1977&query_code={FCCFA5E2-C533-4B7C-BB21-2E8F77431D2E}

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Statement

During the race and delivery periods, a total of 36 microplastic samples were taken by filtering seawater through two stainless steel filters with 100 and 500 µm meshes. Only the 500 µm are analysed in this dataset. The samples were typically taken 0.5–1.5 meter below the sea surface, although this is dependent on sea-state and heel, being representative of the mixed-layer microplastic concentration, rather than the microplastics floating on the surface. The water supply was from one of two inlets located at each side of the yachts bottom; the leeward intake was always used to avoid air contamination in the system. Some water for the yacht’s water maker supply was diverted to the filtration system and an analytical system (OceanPack™Race by SubCtech GmbH) that also measured salinity, temperature and partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2). The OceanPack continuously logged the position during sampling, as well as the volume of sampled water from a flowmeter located at the filtration unit. The filters were exchanged at variable intervals during the delivery and race periods due to competitive constraints which resulted in a range of sampling-times and volumes. The average time between filter change was ~12h (min 2h, max 22h) and the sampled volume for each sample averaged at 0.37 m³ (min 0.05m³ max 0.7m³).

After sampling, these filters were securely packed and transported to the lab in Kiel to be measured for their microplastic concentration after sampling.

In a laboratory under filtered air (DB1000, HEPA filtration, Q = 950 m³/h, Mo¨cklinghoff Lufttechnik; Bergmann et al., 2017), each filter was transferred to a glass beaker and the inside of the bag rinsed into the beaker with 0.2 µm-filtered ultrapure water (18.2 MOhm-cm; MilliQ, Millipore). The filter was sonicated in an ultrasonic bath for 15 minutes to remove particles, and the filter removed from the beaker and rinsed. The remaining suspension was then filtered onto a glass-fiber filter (GF/F; Whatman) under gentle vacuum, and filters air-dried and stored in glass petri dishes. Plastic fragments and fibers were identified visually under magnification by personnel trained on reference particles down to 20 µm in size. Plastic items were transferred to glass mounting slides for imaging, size measurement, and polymer identification by near-infrared hyperspectral imaging (Beck et al., in prep). This method has a practical size detection limit of about 100 µm, but reliable measurement is limited by the narrowest particle dimension. Unfortunately, the particles found in the current study were too small to give clearly identifiable spectra for polymer identification. Work is ongoing to improve detection limits for small particles. Note the presented analysis focuses on the 500 um filter data as particles on the 100 um filter are too small for the hyperspectral camera.

The methods employed allowed separating microplastic fibers and fragments which is a new feature with respect to the last sampling campaign and Raman measurements (Tanuha et al., 2020).

Tanhua T, Gutekunst SB, Biastoch A (2020) A near-synoptic survey of ocean microplastic concentration along an around-the-world sailing race. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0243203. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243203. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243203

Beck, A.J., M. Kaandorp, T. Hamm, B. Bogner, M. Lenz, E. Van Sebille, E.P. Acterberg. Rapid shipboard measurement of net-collected marine microplastics using near-infrared hyperspectral imaging, in prep.

Bergmann, M., Wirzberger, V., Krumpen, T., Lorenz, C., Primpke, S., Tekman, M. B., & Gerdts, G. (2017). High quantities of microplastic in Arctic deep-sea sediments from the HAUSGARTEN observatory. Environmental science & technology, 51(19), 11000-11010.

Metadata

File identifier

d7601ae4-46bc-4f1a-b2c6-863e25e3570d XML

Metadata language

English

Character set

UTF8

Hierarchy level

Dataset

Date stamp

2025-05-07T00:00:00

Metadata standard name

ISO 19115:2003/19139

Metadata standard version

1.0

Metadata author

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
The Ocean Race		info@theoceanrace.com	Point of contact