Overvågning af mikroplast i havbundssediment 2024

This work was carried out for the Danish Environment Protection Agency (EPA) for an environmental monitoring program in accordance with the EU Marine Strategy Directive. The purpose of the monitoring is to monitor the state of the environment in the areas covered by the Marine Strategy Directive. The Directive is divided into 11 so-called descriptors, each describing different monitoring areas. The entire Danish marine strategy monitoring is described in Denmark's Marine Strategy II, Monitoring Program 2. Overall, this monitoring is the basis for an assessment of the state of the environment for each descriptor. Descriptor 10 of the Directive deals with marine litter, and the descriptor's criterion 1 describes that the composition, quantity, and spatial distribution of marine litter must be assessed. In this context, microplastics (MP) in sediment must be monitored. This report presents the results from the first round of monitoring. It attempts to map the abundance and geographical distribution of MP in sediments in 20 stations, which were all collected in 2024