41 beaches adopted for marine litter survey
With summer quickly approaching, beaches will once again be a popular spot whether it is for swimming or travelling by ferry boat to our favourite summer destination. While enjoying ourselves at the beach, our eye will no doubt fall on the litter that is floating nearby. Marine litter is a global environmental problem with no borders! While most marine litter is caused by activities linked to the mainland, during the summer there is more litter due to tourist related activities. In the Mediterranean Sea alone, almost 50% of the litter comes from tourist related activities.
The PERSEUS project, the largest marine environmental research project funded by the European Commission under Ocean of Tomorrow 2011-3 recognises that marine litter is a serious environmental threat. So this year, EIR Global as the consortium partner responsible for the communication activities of the project, has launched the Adopt-A-Beach initiative as part of the Marine Litter Watch Campaign it is implementing in the project. To date a total of 41 beaches have been adopted by the PERSEUS project network of partner institutes in Tunisia (2), Morocco (4), France (6), Italy (8), Malta (1), Israel (5), Spain (3), Turkey (1), Greece (2), Cyprus (1), Bulgaria (4) and Romania (5).
Our partner network of scientists will survey their adopted beach four times a year for marine litter. The information will be recorded using the dedicated survey of the Marine LitterWatch, a smartphone application developed by the European Environmental Agency (EEA) and launched last summer on a pilot basis in which the PERSEUS project participated.
The goal is to create a panoramic beach marine litter data. The data on litter submitted through the app will be fed to a central database of EEA. From this database, data can be retrieved, directly linked or used by regional/national databases and/or further disseminated into a wider range of products (e.g. survey reports and maps). Data can also be visualised through the EEA web site and embedded in other web pages or applications. For more information and to download the Marine LitterWatch app, you can visit the PERSEUS project website(www.perseus-net.eu) and the website of the EEA (www.eea.europa.eu)
