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Cleaner seas: reducing marine pollution

• Original Research
• Published: 02 August 2021
• Volume 32 , pages 145–160, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Kathryn A. Willis 1 , 2 , 5   na1 ,
• Catarina Serra-Gonçalves 1 , 3 ,
• Kelsey Richardson 1 , 2 , 5 ,
• Qamar A. Schuyler 2 ,
• Halfdan Pedersen 8 ,
• Kelli Anderson 4 ,
• Jonathan S. Stark 1 , 7 ,
• Joanna Vince 1 , 5 ,
• Britta D. Hardesty 1 , 2 ,
• Chris Wilcox 1 , 2 , 3 ,
• Barbara F. Nowak 1 , 4 ,
• Jennifer L. Lavers 3 ,
• Jayson M. Semmens 3 ,
• Dean Greeno 1 , 6 ,
• Catriona MacLeod 1 , 3 ,
• Nunnoq P. O. Frederiksen 9 , 10 &
• Peter S. Puskic   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1352-8843 1 , 3   na1  

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In the age of the Anthropocene, the ocean has typically been viewed as a sink for pollution. Pollution is varied, ranging from human-made plastics and pharmaceutical compounds, to human-altered abiotic factors, such as sediment and nutrient runoff. As global population, wealth and resource consumption continue to grow, so too does the amount of potential pollution produced. This presents us with a grand challenge which requires interdisciplinary knowledge to solve. There is sufficient data on the human health, social, economic, and environmental risks of marine pollution, resulting in increased awareness and motivation to address this global challenge, however a significant lag exists when implementing strategies to address this issue. This review draws upon the expertise of 17 experts from the fields of social sciences, marine science, visual arts, and Traditional and First Nations Knowledge Holders to present two futures; the Business-As-Usual, based on current trends and observations of growing marine pollution, and a More Sustainable Future, which imagines what our ocean could look like if we implemented current knowledge and technologies. We identify priority actions that governments, industry and consumers can implement at pollution sources, vectors and sinks, over the next decade to reduce marine pollution and steer us towards the More Sustainable Future.

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Introduction

The ocean has historically been a sink for pollution, leaving modern society with significant ocean pollution legacy issues to manage (Elliott and Elliott 2013 ; O'Shea et al. 2018 ). People continue to pollute the ocean at increasing rates creating further damage to marine ecosystems. This results in detrimental impacts on livelihoods, food security, marine navigation, wildlife and well-being, among others (Krushelnytska 2018 ; Lebreton and Andrady 2019 ; Nichols 2014 ; Seitzinger et al. 2002 ). As pollution presents a multitude of stressors for ocean life, it cannot be explored in isolation (Khan et al., 2018 ). Thus, global coordinated efforts are essential to manage the current and future state of the ocean and to minimise further damage from pollution (Krushelnytska 2018 ; Macleod et al. 2016 ; O'Brien et al. 2019 ; Williams et al. 2015 ). Efforts are also needed to tackle key questions, such as how do pollutants function in different environments, and interact with each other?

Pollution can be broadly defined as any natural or human-derived substance or energy that is introduced into the environment by humans and that can have a detrimental effect on living organisms and natural environments (UNEP 1982 ). Pollutants, including light and sound in addition to the more commonly recognised forms, can enter the marine environment from a multitude of sources and transport mechanisms (Carroll et al. 2017 ; Depledge et al. 2010 ; Longcore and Rich 2004 ; Williams et al. 2015 ). These may include long range atmospheric movement (Amunsen et al. 1992 ) and transport from inland waterways (Lebreton et al. 2017 ).

Current pollutant concentrations in the marine environment are expected to continue increasing with growth in both global population and product production. For example, global plastic production increased by 13 million tonnes in a single year (PlasticsEurope 2018 ), with rising oceanic plastic linked to such trends (Wilcox et al. 2020 ). Pharmaceutical pollution is predicted to increase with population growth, resulting in a greater range of chemicals entering the ocean through stormwater drains and rivers (Bernhardt et al. 2017 ; Rzymski et al. 2017 ). Additionally, each year new chemical compounds are produced whose impacts on the marine environment are untested (Landrigan et al. 2018 ).

Marine pollution harms organisms throughout the food-web in diverse ways. Trace amounts of heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in organisms have the capacity to cause physiological harm (Capaldo et al. 2018 ; Hoffman et al. 2011 ; Salamat et al. 2014 ) and alter behaviours (Brodin et al. 2014 ; Mattsson et al. 2017 ). Artificial lights along coasts at night can disrupt organism navigation, predation and vertical migration (Depledge et al. 2010 ). Pharmaceutical pollutants, such as contraceptive drugs, have induced reproductive failure and sex changes in a range of fish species (Lange et al. 2011 ; Nash et al. 2004 ). Furthermore, some pollutants also have the capacity to bioaccumulate, which means they may become more concentrated in higher trophic marine species (Bustamante et al. 1998 ; Eagles-Smith et al. 2009 ).

Pollution also poses a huge economic risk. Typically, the majority of consequences from pollution disproportionately impact poorer nations who have less resources to manage and remediate these impacts (Alario and Freudenburg 2010 ; Beaumont et al. 2019 ; Golden et al. 2016 ; Landrigan et al. 2018 ). Marine pollution can negatively impact coastal tourism (Jang et al. 2014 ), waterfront real estate (Ofiara and Seneca 2006 ), shipping (Moore 2018 ) and fisheries (Hong et al. 2017 ; Uhrin 2016 ). Contamination of seafood poses a perceived risk to human health, but also results in a significant financial cost for producers and communities (Ofiara and Seneca 2006 ; White et al. 2000 ). Additionally, current remediation strategies for most pollutants in marine and coastal ecosystems are costly, time consuming and may not prove viable in global contexts (Ryan and Jewitt 1996 ; Smith et al. 1997 ; Uhrin 2016 ).

Reducing marine pollution is a global challenge that needs to be addressed for the health of the ocean and the communities and industries it supports. The United Nations proposed and adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) designed to guide future developments and intended to be achieved by 2030. It has flagged the reduction of marine pollution as a key issue underpinning the achievement of SDG 14, Life Under Water, with target 14.1 defined as “prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution” by 2025 (United Nations General Assembly 2015 ). In the UN Decade of Ocean Science (2021–2030), one of the six ocean outcomes relates specifically to the identification and reduction of marine pollution (A Clean Ocean; UN DOS SD). The task of reducing marine pollution is daunting—the ocean is so vast that cleaning it seems almost impossible. However, effective management of pollution at its source is a successful way to reduce it and protect the ocean (DeGeorges et al. 2010 ; Rochman 2016 ; Simmonds et al. 2014 ; Zhu et al. 2008 ). Strategies, implemented locally, nationally and globally, to prevent, or considerably reduce pollution inputs in combination with removing pollutants from the marine environment (Sherman and van Sebille 2016 ) will allow healthy ocean life and processes to continue into the future. However, such strategies need to be implemented on a collective global scale, and target pollution at key intervals from their creation to their use and disposal.

To help explain how society can most effectively address pollution sources and clean the ocean, we depict two different future seas scenarios by 2030. The first is a Business-As-Usual scenario, where society continues to adhere to current management and global trends. The second is a technically achievable, more sustainable future that is congruent with the SDGs, and where society actively take actions and adopt sustainable solutions. We then explore pollution in three ‘zones’ of action; at the source(s), along the way, and at sink, in the context of river or estuarine systems, as water-transported pollution is commonly associated with urban centres alongside river systems (Alongi and McKinnon 2005 ; Lebreton et al. 2017 ; Lohmann et al. 2012 ; Seitzinger and Mayorga 2016 ).

As a group of interdisciplinary scientists, with expertise in marine pollution, we participated in the Future Seas project ( www.FutureSeas2030.org ), which identified marine pollution as one of 12 grand challenges, and followed the method outlined in Nash et al. ( 2021 ). The process involved a structured discussion to explore the direction of marine social-ecological systems over the course of the UN Decade of Ocean Science, specific to marine pollution. The discussion resulted in developing two alternate future scenarios of marine pollution, a ‘Business-As-Usual’ future that is the current trajectory based on published evidence, and a ‘more sustainable’ future that is technically achievable using existing and emerging knowledge and is consistent with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. To ensure a wide range of world views were present in the future scenarios, Indigenous Leaders and Traditional Knowledge Holders from around the world came together and presented their views, experiences and identified their priorities to remove and reduce marine pollution (Nash et al. 2021 ; Fischer et al. 2020 ).

We defined the scope of our paper by identifying key pollutant sources, types and drivers of marine pollution (Table 1 for pollutant sources and types; see " Future Narratives " below). We then developed a list of feasible actions that could drive the current state of the ocean towards a cleaner, more sustainable future (Supplementary Table 1). From these actions we deliberated as a group and identified ten actions that have high potential to be implemented within the next decade and significantly reduce marine pollution (Fig.  1 ). The linkages between our ten priority actions and the SDGs are outlined in Supplementary Table 2.

source of the pollutant (at the source), once the pollutant is released (along the way), once the pollutant has entered the ocean (at the sink) or at multiple points along the system (bottom arrow). * indicates actions that could be successfully implemented well before the next decade to significantly reduce pollution

Ten actions that can substantially reduce the amount of pollution entering the marine environment. Actions are placed along the system where they could have the greatest impact at reducing pollution: at the

Future narratives

We identified three broad sources of marine pollution: land-based industry, sea-based industry, and municipal-based sources and the most significant types of pollution characteristic of each source (Table 1 ). We framed our two contrasting future scenarios (Business-As-Usual and a technically feasible sustainable future), around these pollutants and their sources (Table 2 ). In addition to these future narratives, we reflect on the present impacts that pollution is currently having on the livelihoods and cultures of First Nations peoples and Traditional Knowledge Holders. We include the narratives of the palawa pakana people, from lutruwita/Tasmania (Table 3 ), and the Greenlandic Inuit people (Table 4 ).

We identified three key drivers that will substantially contribute to an increasingly polluted ocean if no actions are taken to intervene; societal behaviours, equity and access to technologies, and governance and policy. Alternatively, these pollution drivers can be viewed as opportunities to implement strategic measures that shift the trajectory from a polluted marine environment to a healthier marine environment. Below we highlight how current societal behaviours, lack of implementation of technological advancements, and ocean governance and policy making contribute to an increasingly polluted ocean and drive society towards a BAU future (Table 2 ). Importantly, we discuss how changes in these behaviours, and improvements in technologies and governance can lead to reduced marine pollution, ultimately driving a cleaner, more sustainable ocean for the future.

Societal behaviour

Societal behaviours that drive increasing pollution in the world’s ocean.

A consumer culture that prioritizes linear production and consumption of cheap, single-use materials and products over circular product design and use (such as, reusable products or products that are made from recycled material), ultimately drives the increased creation of materials. Current production culture is often aligned with little consideration for the socioeconomic and environmental externalities associated with the pollution that is generated from a product’s creation to its disposal (Foltete et al. 2011 ; Schnurr et al. 2018 ). Without a dedicated management strategy for the fate of products after they have met their varying, often single-use objectives, these materials will enter and accumulate in the surrounding environment as pollution (Krushelnytska 2018 ; Sun et al. 2012 ). Three examples of unsustainable social behaviours that lead to products and materials ending up as marine pollution are: (1) the design and creation of products that are inherently polluting. For example, agricultural chemicals or microplastics and chemicals in personal care and cosmetic products. (2) social behaviours that normalize and encourage consumption of single-use products and materials. For example, individually wrapped vegetables or take-away food containers. (3) low awareness of the impacts and consequences and therefore the normalization of polluting behaviours. For example, noise generation by ships at sea (Hildebrand 2009 ) or the large application of fertilizers to agricultural products (Sun et al. 2012 ).

Shifting societal behaviours towards sustainable production and consumption

A cleaner ocean with reduced pollution will require a shift in production practices across a wide array of industries, as well as a shift in consumer behaviour. Presently, consumers and industry alike are seeking science-based information to inform decision making (Englehardt 1994 ; Vergragt et al. 2016 ). Consumers have the power to demand change from industries through purchasing power and social license to operate (Saeed et al. 2019 ). Policymakers have the power to enforce change from industries through regulations and reporting. Aligning the values between producers, consumers and policymakers will ensure best practices of sustainable consumption and production are adopted (Huntington 2017 ; Moktadir et al. 2018 ; Mont and Plepys 2008 ). Improved understanding of the full life cycle of costs, consequences (including internalised externalities, such as the polluter-pays-principle (Schwartz 2018 )), materials used, and pollution potential of products could substantially shift the trajectory in both production and consumerism towards cleaner, more sustainable seas (Grappi et al. 2017 ; Liu et al. 2016 ; Lorek and Spangenberg 2014 ; Sun et al. 2012 ). For example, economic policy instruments (Abbott and Sumaila 2019 ), production transparency (Joakim Larsson and Fick 2009 ), recirculation of materials (Michael 1998 ; Sharma and Henriques 2005 ), and changes in supply-chains (Ouardighi et al. 2016 ) are some of the ways production and consumerism could become more sustainable and result in a cleaner ocean.

Equity and access to technologies

Inequitable access to available technologies.

Despite major advancements in technology and innovation for waste management, much of the current waste infrastructure implemented around the world is outdated, underutilised, or abandoned. This is particularly the case for rapidly developing countries with large populations who have not had access to waste reduction and mitigation technologies and systems employed in upper income countries (Velis 2014 ; Wilson et al. 2015 ). The informal recycling sector (IRS) performs the critical waste management role in many of the world’s most populous countries.

Harnessing technologies for today and the future

Arguably, in today’s world we see an unprecedented number and types of technological advances stemming from but not limited to seismic exploration (Malehmir et al. 2012 ), resource mining (Jennings and Revill 2007 ; Kampmann et al. 2018 ; Parker et al. 2016 ), product movement (Goodchild and Toy 2018 ; Tournadre 2014 ) and product manufacturing (Bennett 2013 ; Mahalik and Nambiar 2010 ). Applying long term vision rather than short term economic gain could include supporting technologies and innovations that provide substantial improvements over Business-As-Usual. For example, supporting businesses or industries that improve recyclability of products (Umeda et al. 2013 ; Yang et al. 2014 ), utilize waste (Korhonen et al. 2018 ; Pan et al. 2015 ), reduce noise (Simmonds et al. 2014 ), and increase overall production efficiency will substantially increase the health of the global ocean. Efforts should be made wherever possible to maintain current waste management infrastructure where proven and effective, in addition to ensuring reliance and durability of new technologies and innovations for improved lifespan and end of life product management. Consumer demand, taxation, and incentives will play a necessary roll to ensure the appropriate technologies are adopted (Ando and Freitas 2011 ; Krass et al. 2013 ).

Governance and policy

Lack of ocean governance and policy making.

The governance arrangements that address marine pollution on global, regional, and national levels are complex and multifaceted. Success requires hard-to-achieve integrated responses. In addition to the equity challenges discussed in Alexander et al. ( 2020 ) which highlight the need for reduced inequity to improve the susatinability of the marine enviornemnt, we highlight that land-based waste is the largest contributor to marine pollution and therefore requires governance and policies that focus on pollution at the source. Current regulations, laws and policies do not always reflect or address the grand challenge of reducing marine pollution at the source. The ocean has traditionally been governed through sectoral approaches such as fisheries, tourism, offshore oil and mining. Unfortunately, this sector approach has caused policy overlap, conflict, inefficiencies and inconsistencies regarding marine pollution governance (Haward 2018 ; Vince and Hardesty 2016 ). Although production, manufacturing, and polluting may largely take place under geo-political boundaries, pollution in the high seas is often hard to assign to a country of origin. This makes identifying and convicting polluters very difficult (Urbina 2019 ). For example, the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL 73/78) has been criticised as ineffective in reducing marine pollution, largely due to the lack of easily monitoring, identifying and convicting offenders (Henderson 2001 ; Mattson 2006 ).

Harnessing ocean governance and policy

Binding domestic policies and international agreements are regulatory levers that can drive change at local, community, state, federal and international scales (Vince and Hardesty 2018 ). The UN Law of the Sea Convention Part XII (articles 192–237) is dedicated to the protection and preservation of the marine environment and marine pollution is addressed in article 194. It also sets out the responsibilities of states and necessary measures they need to undertake to minimise pollution their own and other jurisdictions. While the Law of the Sea recognises the differences between sea-based and land-based pollution, it does not address the type of pollutants and technical rules in detail. Voluntary measures including MARPOL 73/78 (IMO 1978 ), United Nations Environment Assembly resolutions (UNEA 2019 ) and the FAO voluntary guidelines for the marking of fishing gear (FAO 2019 ), already exist in an attempt to reduce specific components of marine pollution. However, the health of marine ecosystems would benefit from multilateral international or regional agreements that minimise the production of items or the use of processes that result in high levels of marine ecosystem harm. For example, international regulation for underwater sound (McCarthy 2004 ), policies to reduce waste emissions (Nie 2012 ) and the polluter pays principle (Gaines 1991 ) are policies and agreements that could minimise pollutants entering the marine ecosystem. Global and regional governance can create a favourable context for national policy action. Policies that adapt to shifts in climate and are guided by science and indigenous knowledge could be more likely to succeed (Ban et al. 2020 ).

Actions to achieve a more sustainable future

The grand challenge of reducing ocean pollution can seem overwhelming. However, there are myriad actions, interventions and activities which are highly feasible to implement within the next decade to rapidly reduce the quantity of pollution entering the ocean. Implementing these actions requires collaboration among policymakers, industry, and consumers alike. To reduce pollution from sea-based industries, land-based industries and municipal-based pollutants (Table 1 ), we encourage the global community to consider three ‘zones’ of action or areas to implement change: at the source(s), along the way/along the supply chain, and at sinks (Fig.  1 ). It is important to highlight that action cannot be implemented at any one zone only. For example, repeated clean ups at the sink may reduce pollution in an area for a time, but will not stem the flow of pollutants. Rather, action at all three zones is required if rapid, effective reductions of ocean pollution are to occur.

Actions at the source(s)

Reducing pollution at its multitude of sources is the most effective way to reduce and prevent marine pollution. This is true for land-based industry pollutants, sea-based industry pollutants and municipal-based pollutants. An example for each includes; reduction in fertilizer leading to less agricultural runoff in coastal waters (Bennett et al. 2001 ), changes in packaging materials may see reductions in production on a per item basis, and a lowered frequency and timing of seismic blasting would result in a decrease in underwater noise pollution at the source. The benefits of acting at the source are powerful: if a pollutant is not developed or used initially, it cannot enter the marine environment. Action can occur at the source using various approaches such as; prevention of contaminants, outreach campaigns, introduction of bans (or prohibitions) and incentives and the replacement of technologies and products for less impactful alternatives (Fig.  1 ). However, achieving public support abrupt and major changes can be difficult and time consuming. Such changes may meet resistance (e.g. stopping or changing seismic testing) and there are other factors beyond marine pollution that must be considered (e.g. health and safety of coastal lighting in communities may be considered more important than impacts of light pollution on nearby marine ecosystems). Actions such as outreach and education campaigns (Supplementary Table 2) will be an important pathway to achieve public support.

Actions along the way

Reducing marine pollution along the way requires implementation of approaches aimed at reducing pollution once it has been released from the source and is in transit to the marine environment (Fig.  1 ). Acting along the way does provide the opportunity to target particular pollutants (point-source pollution) which can be particularly effective in reducing those pollutants. While municipal-based pollutants can be reduced ‘along the way’ using infrastructure such as gross pollutant traps (GPTs) and wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), some pollution such as light or sound may be more difficult to minimize or reduce in such a manner. WWTPs can successfully capture excess nutrients, pharmaceuticals and litter that are transported through sewerage and wastewater systems. However, pollution management ‘ en route ’ means there is both more production and more likelihood of leakage to the environment. In addition, infrastructure that captures pollution is often expensive, requires ongoing maintenance (and hence funding support), and if not managed properly, can become physically blocked, or result in increased risk to human health and the broader environment (e.g. flooding during heavy rainfall events). When considering management opportunities and risks for both land and sea-based pollution, the approaches required may be quite different, yielding unique challenges and opportunities for resolution in each (Alexander et al. 2020 ).

Actions at the sinks

Acting at sinks essentially requires pollution removal (Fig.  1 ). This approach is the most challenging, most expensive, and least likely to yield positive outcomes. The ocean encompasses more than 70% of the earth’s surface and extends to depths beyond ten kilometres. Hence it is a vast area for pollutants to disperse and economically and logistically prohibitive to clean completely. However, in some situations collecting pollutants and cleaning the marine environment is most viable option and there are examples of success. For example, some positive steps to remediate excess nutrients include integrated multi-trophic aquaculture (Buck et al. 2018 ). ‘Net Your Problem’ is a recycling program for fishers to dispose of derelict fishing gear ( www.netyourproblem.com ). Municipal-based and sea-based industry pollutants are often reduced through clean-up events. For example, large oils spills often require community volunteers to remove and clean oil from coastal environments and wildlife. Such activities provide increased awareness of marine pollution issues, and if data are recorded, can provide a baseline or benchmark against which to compare change. To address pollution at sinks requires us to prioritise efforts towards areas with high acclamations of pollution, (e.g., oil spills). Repeated removal or cleaning is unlikely to yield long term results, without managing the pollution upstream –whether along the route or at the source.

To achieve the More Sustainable Future, and significantly reduce pollution (thereby achieving the SGD targets in Supplementary Table 2), society must take ongoing action now and continue this movement beyond 2030. Prioritising the prevention of pollutants from their sources, using bans and incentives, outreach and education, and replacement technologies, is one of the most important steps that can be taken to shift towards a more sustainable future. Without addressing pollution from the source, current and future efforts will continue to remediate rather than mitigate the damage pollution causes to the ocean and organisms within. For pollutants that are not currently feasible to reduce at the source, collection of pollutants before they reach the ocean should be prioritised. For example, wastewater treatment plants and gross pollutant traps located at point-source locations such as stormwater and wastewater drains are feasible methods for reducing pollutants before they reach the ocean. Actions at the sink should target areas where the maximum effort per quantity of pollution can be recovered from the ocean. For example, prompt clean-up responses to large pollution events such as oil spills or flooding events and targeting clean-ups at beaches and coastal waters with large accumulations of plastic pollution.

These priority actions are not the perfect solution, but they are great examples of what can be and is feasibly done to manage marine pollution. Each action is at risk of failing to shift to a cleaner ocean without the support from governments, industries, and individuals across the whole system (from the source to the sink). Governments and individuals need to push for legislation that is binding and support sustainable practices and products. Effective methods for policing also need to be established in partnership with the binding legislation. Regardless of which zone are addressed, our actions on sea and coastal country must be guided by Indigenous knowledge and science (Fischer et al., 2020 ; Mustonen (in prep).

We recognise the major global disruptions which have occurred in 2020, particularly the COVID-19 pandemic. The futures presented here were developed prior to this outbreak and therefore do not consider the effects of this situation on global pollution trends. In many ways, this situation allows us to consider a ‘reset’ in global trajectory as discussed by Nash et al. ( 2021 ). Our sustainable future scenario may be considered a very real goal to achieve in the coming decade.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Lola, Rex and Vanessa Greeno for sharing their knowledge of the impacts of pollution on their art and culture. Thank you to Animate Your Science, JB Creative Services and Annie Gatenby for assistance with the graphical aspects of this project. Thank you to Rupert the Boxer puppy for deciding authorship order. This paper is part of the ‘Future Seas’ initiative ( www.FutureSeas2030.org ), hosted by the Centre for Marine Socioecology at the University of Tasmania. This initiative delivers a series of journal articles addressing key challenges for the UN International Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development 2021-2030. The general concepts and methods applied in many of these papers were developed in large collaborative workshops involving more participants than listed as co-authors here, and we are grateful for their collective input. Funding for Future Seas was provided by the Centre for Marine Socioecology, IMAS, MENZIES and the College of Arts, Law and Education, the College of Science and Engineering at UTAS, and Snowchange from Finland. We acknowledge support from a Research Enhancement Program grant from the DVCR Office at UTAS. Thank you to Camilla Novaglio for providing an internal project review of an earlier draft, and to guest editor Rob Stephenson, editor-in-chief Jan Strugnell and two anonymous reviewers, for improving the manuscript. We acknowledge and pay respect to the traditional owners and custodians of sea country all around the world, and recognise their collective wisdom and knowledge of our ocean and coasts.

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P.S. Puskic and K.A. Willis share equal lead authorship on this paper.

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Centre for Marine Sociology, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Kathryn A. Willis, Catarina Serra-Gonçalves, Kelsey Richardson, Jonathan S. Stark, Joanna Vince, Britta D. Hardesty, Chris Wilcox, Barbara F. Nowak, Dean Greeno, Catriona MacLeod & Peter S. Puskic

CSIRO Oceans & Atmosphere, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Kathryn A. Willis, Kelsey Richardson, Qamar A. Schuyler, Britta D. Hardesty & Chris Wilcox

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Catarina Serra-Gonçalves, Chris Wilcox, Jennifer L. Lavers, Jayson M. Semmens, Catriona MacLeod & Peter S. Puskic

Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, Fisheries and Aquaculture, University of Tasmania, Newnham, TAS, Australia

Kelli Anderson & Barbara F. Nowak

School of Social Sciences, College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Kathryn A. Willis, Kelsey Richardson & Joanna Vince

School of Creative Arts and Media, College of Arts, Law and Education, University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Dean Greeno

Australian Antarctic Division, Hobart, TAS, Australia

Jonathan S. Stark

Pikkoritta Consult, Aasiaat, Greenland

Halfdan Pedersen

The PISUNA Project, Qeqertalik Municipality, Attu, Greenland

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Snowchange Cooperative, Selkie, Finland

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P.S. Puskic and K. Willis share equal lead authorship on this paper. All authors wrote sections of this manuscript and contributed to concept design and paper discussions. N.F and H.P. wrote the narratives for Table 4 . D.G. wrote Table 3 . All authors provided edits and feedback to earlier drafts.

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Willis, K.A., Serra-Gonçalves, C., Richardson, K. et al. Cleaner seas: reducing marine pollution. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 32 , 145–160 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11160-021-09674-8

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Introduction

Given the importance of oceans to humankind and the increasing pressure they are under, it is timely to identify and prioritize oceanic health issues that are covered in their ill-defined state by “marine pollution” (MP). MP increasingly leads to disturbances of the oceanic environment and its biota and adversely affects environmental and human health. Pollutants may have various biological impacts such as death, metabolic malfunction, genetic and phenological damage. If such impacts are sublethal, they will lead to fitness changes. Depleted numbers of sensitive species are causing a decrease in biodiversity, and may cause ecosystem function changes by habitat and food chain alterations and those of productivity patterns.

Major challenges in MP studies are conceptional as well as operational. Conceptionally, pollutants are very much understood as chemicals only. From a largely chemical perspective pollution studies need to open up to any stressor that affects organisms in their respective environment. Stress to organisms in the marine environment can be caused by physical (e.g., electromagnetic radiation, electricity, drag etc.) chemical (e.g., organic or inorganic), physico-chemical (pH) or biological factors (biotoxins, competition, predation, parasitism). MP is also very much perceived as man-made although there exists natural pollution since ever—if natural is understood as stressors of organisms that are not anthropogenic (e.g., input of freshwater, sediments and their contaminants, volcanic activity outside and inside the oceans). Natural pollution happened even before humans contributed to MP so much more in recent centuries.

Humans intensified natural MP and certainly created novel stressors through technological innovations. These got magnified as a new quality in the antropocene by man-made changes to soil, atmosphere and waters. The hydrosphere includes the oceans which cover about 70% of the earth's surface and are providing more than 99% of the earth's water resources. Man-made effects include industrial (e.g., noise, radiation, heavy metals, nanoparticles), agricultural (e.g., pesticides, antibiotics, fertilizers), and urban pollutants (e.g., organic matter, pharmaceuticals, CO 2 ) which reach the oceans via various pathways, from the atmosphere, aquatic drainages and rivers, from coastal groundwater, and through organisms getting dispersed between these realms ( Sweet, 2013 ). Everything that humans are doing will have consequences. Human activities are never environmentally neutral.

As in all sciences it will be important to make temporal and spatial distinctions in MP studies. Spatially—the oceans are not separated from other realms, such as land and freshwater systems and the atmosphere. Multiple interfaces facilitate the fluxes of energy and matter that also allow the influx of stressors. Within the oceans there are interactions between sea bottom and water column, and water column and atmosphere (or seasonal and multi-year sea-ice and atmosphere during winter and in polar seas). Distribution patterns of stressors may exhibit substantial horizontal and vertical patchiness. Several characteristics of the sea surface can remotely be monitored meanwhile by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approaches. Temporally—stressors may act at a gradient of very different time scales: from geological times shaping the adaptation and evolution of organisms ( Dahms and Lee, 2010 ), to minutes and seconds demarcating behavior ( Michalec et al., 2013 ), and even to parts of a second where chemical reactions typically take place ( Dahms et al., 2014 ).

There is a distinction between field and laboratory approaches. Field-oriented approaches are acting at the natural in situ platform where stressors originate or might get transformed, disposed and remobilized. Field approaches are often seen inferior to laboratory in vitro approaches. The latter are expected to provide a better experimental and analytical resolution. It is a major challenge and strongly pleaded here to integrate both approaches in order to obtain a more realistic understanding about the mechanism of action in the natural world which we are ultimately concerned with. Besides taken field samples from natural or experimental sites to the laboratory for further study there is the possibility of micro- to mesocosm studies which provide a gradient from strictly controlled experiments to increasingly complex interaction of various variables that are characteristic for the real world. The main challenge here will be to study the interactions at interphases multidisciplinary and integrate the results in a systems approach ( Dahms and Lee, 2010 ).

In the following I will demarcate challenges which are provided by some non-exhaustive examples of novel stressors in oceanic pollution studies followed by challenges to novel approaches to various aspects of MP. At the same time there are challenges for innovative approaches to analyze sources, mechanisms of actions, and effects of stressors. These will provide new options for remediation, education, management, and innovative policies for the health management of the oceans.

Challenges from Novel Stressors

Climate changes.

Climate changes are impacting global water resources, and increasing the need for a deeper understanding of the interaction between climate and natural resources. Given the global climate challenge this will affect non-chemical stressors (habitat loss, invasive species), and will affect chemical toxicity alike (climate-induced toxicity susceptibility, toxicant-induced climate susceptibility). Observational palaeolimnological techniques such as the use of microfossils (forams, diatoms, pollen etc.) are well established and can significantly contribute to the understanding of climatic variability and the impacts that change in climate have on marine ecosystems. These can utilize a combination of proxies including a range of biological fossils and metagenomic, and geochemical chronological techniques to investigate long-term climate changes in the marine realm ( Hembrow et al., 2014 ). There is a great concern for both MP and Global Climate Change, but the interaction between both forcing factors on marine ecosystems is not deeply studied. Climate Change may increase the vulnerability (or stress level) of several marine organisms/ecosystems that makes MP also a serious issue in the Global Change discussion ( Lelieveld et al., 2001 ).

Microplastics

Marine debris is a growing global problem posing a threat to a variety of marine organisms through toxic action of nanoparticles and the ingestion of particles and entanglement. Plastics are the most common type of marine debris, constituting between 60 and 80% of all marine debris and over 90% of all floating particles. Particularly microplastics are of concern because they can be ingested by a variety of marine organisms, and possibly can also be transferred within food webs. The potential toxicity of microplastics is basically due to the additives and monomers they include. Microplastics can effectively absorb hydrophobic contaminants from the water due to their relatively large area to volume ratio. Experiments were carried out with different Baltic Sea zooplankton taxa to scan their potential to ingest plastics. These demonstrated the ingestion of microspheres in all the taxa studied, from lower (mesozooplankton) to higher trophic level (macrozooplankton) ( Setälä et al., 2014 ).

Pharmaceuticals

Among the emerging contaminants, are pharmaceuticals one of the most relevant groups of substances in aquatic ecosystems due to universal use, their chemico-physical properties and unknown mode of action in aquatic organisms at low concentrations. After administration many drugs and their transformation products are retained only to some extent in waste-water treatment plants. They then enter the aquatic environment in considerable high amounts. The annual drug consumption in treating human and animal diseases, also in livestock and aquaculture, was estimated to be thousands of tons worldwide ( WHO, 2012 ). This was leading to high concentrations in surface water also of developed countries. Chronic and subtle effects can be expected when aquatic organisms are exposed to persistent and accumulative compounds for longterm. Aspects of bioconcentration, bioaccumulation and potential biomagnification in aquatic ecosystems are unknown not only for most pharmaceuticals but other compounds as well. More comprehensive assessments for the evaluation of environmental and human health risks and analytical methods are required to detect the bioaccumulation of pharmaceuticals (see Zenker et al., 2014 ).

The World Health Organization has recently acknowledged that contrary to the trend for other environmental stressors, noise exposure is increasing worldwide. Since the establishment of the European Noise Directive in 2002, there has been a significant improvement in the awareness among the general public and policymakers about the relationship between human exposure to environmental noise and related public health concerns ( Murphy and King, 2014 ). As a result, the importance of environmental noise pollution in shaping urban, environmental and public health policies is increasing internationally. Health issues associated with noise pollution are now fairly well-established and extensively documented. In fact, recent research suggests that chronic exposure to environmental noise can lead to a permanent disruption in sleep. This may hold not only for humans since noise disturbs other marine organisms as well with effects on several levels of integration.

Combined Effects, Bioaccumulation, and Biomagnification

Bioavailable stressors in combination may have other than their added single effects in MP studies. The interaction of multiple elements in a system may produce an effect different from or greater than the sum of their individual effects, i.e., synergy. Pollutants also commonly bioaccumulate in individuals and their organs differentially and may get biomagnified through trophic cascades in food webs. Here top predators should particularly be taken into account, but also data concerning the stressor distribution in the whole aquatic environment (water, sediment, biota) should be measured or collected for an effect evaluation of bioaccumulation and biomagnification. When tissue residues are analyzed there should be a focus on the toxicodynamics (action and potency) of the toxicants as well as on toxicokinetic variations (temporal aspects of accumulation, biotransformation, and internal distribution) ( Zenker et al., 2014 ).

Innovative Approaches in MP—Science, Technology, Policies

There are new approaches needed in order to face new challenges in monitoring the presence and effects of stressors and in the analytical study of mechanisms-of-action. Some novel approaches are readily available that have to be taken to practice and evaluated in their efficiency. Here, some challenging technologies are briefly summarized as examples.

Innovative Challenges in the Field

GIS have gained popularity in recent years because they provide spatial data management and access through the web. Ocean surveillance has traditionally been accomplished by aircraft and coastguard forces, whose work, unfortunately, is limited by the monitoring costs of large areas. In this respect, spacecrafts provide a better solution. Today we can observe ocean pollution in the shape of massive plastic stains or oil carpets resulting from grounded tankers or the harvest of crude oil. Regarding the type of sensors used in ocean monitoring, microwaves are preferred to optical sensors, as they can provide data under all weather and brightness conditions. These type of sensors are called Synthetic Aperture Radars (SAR), which capture the scatter of microwaves on a determined surface and are optimal for capturing the roughness of the sea surface, regardless of weather and light conditions. Fustes et al. (2014) provide an exemplary tool that offers an integrated framework for the detection and localization of marine spills using remote sensing, GIS, and cloud computing. The authors present advanced segmentation algorithms are presented in order to isolate dark areas in SAR images, including fuzzy clustering and wavelets.

To assess environmental hazards, such as of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) and EDCs to marine organisms, it is important to examine the occurrence, fate, and distribution of contaminants in both sediment and water column from physical samples ( Lee et al., 2013 ). Instrumental analysis, however, is usually time consuming and expensive due to the exhaustive clean-up required to remove all the interferences and the use of sophisticated and expensive instruments. Due to the complex nature of environmental mixtures, it is further difficult to predict potential effects of environmental contaminants based on instrumental analysis alone. Such shortcomings led to the development of new and alternative methods which apply biological techniques to determine these compounds. As an example for such innovations provides the sediment quality triad approach an effect-based approach that combines measures of various chemicals, potential toxicities, and benthic community structures ( Khim and Hong, 2014 ).

OMICs-Approaches

OMICs studies refer to modern biological approaches ending in -omics, such as genomics, proteomics or metabolomics. The related suffix -ome addresses the objects of study, such as the genome, proteome or metabolome, respectively. OMICs studies aim at the collective characterization and quantification of pools of biological molecules and a bioinformatic evaluation of those that translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of organisms. In MP studies toxicogenomics pursue how toxicants interact with genetic material ( Dahms and Lee, 2010 ). Stressors can cause genotoxic effects which alter genetic material which in turn generates irreversible damage or mutations, with consequences at all downstream integration levels of organisms. Massive DNA damage can promote death or sterility in individuals, whereas other sublethal gene mutations may change the germ line and this way affect the gene pool of a population. If sublethal this can lead to microevolutionary processes. Evolutionary adaptations will select pollution-tolerant individuals that then change the genetic diversity of populations ( Piña and Barata, 2014 ).

Formerly, large-scale proteomics was only possible for model organisms whose genomes were sequenced. The use of next-generation sequencers is now changing this scenario. Proteogenomics meanwhile allows the use of experimental data to refine genome annotations. Combining genomic and proteomic data is becoming routine in many research projects. Genome drafts can be retrieved for any organism using next-generation sequencers at reasonable cost. The use of RNA-seq to establish nucleotide sequences that are directly translated into protein sequences appears to be a promising challenge ( Armengaud et al., 2014 ).

Modeling Approaches

Marine system models can provide useful predictions. Experts generally agree that ecological models only provide predictions of real system functioning when there are strong physical (as opposed to chemical or ecological) drivers. Recent developments in modeling include changes in technology, changes in the modeling community and changes in the context in which modeling is conducted. According to Robson (in press) do current trends increase the data assimilation, operationalization, the integration of models, and the development of improved tools for skill assessment. The author claims that a merge of mechanistic and stochastic modeling through approaches like Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling and Bayesian Melding or surrogate modeling are understood as key emerging areas.

MP creates an economic problem since it reduces the value of the natural capital provided by oceanic resources. At present the financial system tends to look only toward immediate profit, discounting ecosystem services and medium and long term advantages of environmental protection vs. treatment of damages that have occurred. It may be challenging to reevaluate the practice of protection with respect to the precautionary principle ( Wiegleb et al., 2013 ). There is a policy problem in the sense that we need to allocate economic resources for the transition and to consider also the social transformations that it will cause. We need to build good models that can suggest us where to go and what measures to take. Such diagnosis should enable identification of appropriate tools, information products, and relationships that can facilitate our goals (see Spruijt et al., 2014 ).

Role of Scientists, Educators, Practitioners

What other challenges are there for science in the transition to a modern approach of oceanic health studies? Traditionally, scientists have been required to study and develop new and improved technologies in MP studies: better monitoring approaches, better remediation, better management of MP that provide more efficient ways to use investments of man-power, materials and know-how. These are valid approaches, but more may be needed for a transition in MP. We need to develop and evaluate new technologies in the monitoring, mechanistic studies, and the remediation of the oceans in terms of efficiency, their own environmental impact, and their impact on other economic activities. From there, we need to develop strategies to optimize technological benefits and minimize their unintended negative effects—such as those of treatments of polluted areas or organisms. Scientists have the background and responsibility to understand MP as members of a connected global society. With this understanding a further responsibility as citizen scientists is to engage others in deliberative discussions on scientific effords and outcomes, to take actions ourselves in order to mitigate human-caused MP.

Sustainable development activities may comprise of complex sets of ecological, social, economic, and ecological factors. Cross-scale knowledge and applications are increasingly valuable today in achieving successful interdisciplinary action. This also holds for research collaborations among universities and other stakeholders in order to understand and manage the transformative changes in the context of MP. Three aspects may be useful for putting this into an educational practice: (1) making analytical approaches and integrative tools more useful for students, university educators, researchers and academic-practitioners, to incorporate them into interdisciplinary curricula, teaching, research and practice; (2) offering such tools to facilitate integrative action research and collaborative partnerships among educators, researchers, and other academic practitioners; (3) demonstrating how a holistic synthesis can enrich a systems approach to problems such as MP.

For an integrative, multidisciplinary systems approach to MP there are substantial applications for academia, society and industry: e.g., fundamental research in various fields, environmental management (pollution, toxicology, conservation); public health (ground- and recreational waters, environmental hygiene, epidemiology); industrial ecology (natural conservation & restoration, antifouling, aquaculture, food, effect and side-effect screening of pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, and any other industrial products that need to proof safety to human and environmental health). If we can respond to such scientific and technological challenges and transfer scientific and technological knowledge into innovative policies at the national and international level, we can eventually restore a cleaner ocean with its infinite resources and a more equitable and sustainable future for all.

Conclusions

Monitoring and assessments of the marine environmental health status should become integral components of adaptive management programs that are aimed to monitor and remediate MP and the damage it causes to the oceanic environment. Such effords taken separately may not be sufficient for detecting unwanted changes of integrative ecosystem health in a complex marine environment. Complexity is here provided by spatio-temporal gradients, such as geographic, latitudinal, depth, as well as seasonal shifts. In addition, organisms show commonly variable reactions at various levels of integration (e.g., at the level of genome and proteome, physiology, cell, tissue and organ, individual, population, and community). Biota are also characterized by variability in their taxonomic and ontogenetic sensitivity, and different reaction norms of sex. The tendency of most toxicants for differential individual bioaccumulation and biomagnification within food webs further complicates the situation. To date, only a few attempts have been made to challenge an integrative approach using, physical and chemical habitat assessments, biological monitoring, and physiological, biochemical, and genotoxicological parameters to assess the environmental health status of a contaminated aquatic ecosystem. In order to integrate abiotic and biotic endpoints, different approaches should be pursued in a systems-oriented way: physical, chemical, biological; laboratory vs. field; realms (freshwater, brackish, marine—bottom, water column, interfaces); organisms (producer, consumer, decomposer); biological integration levels (ecological, behavioral, chemical, and subcellular). This holds for observational monitoring as well as for experimental approaches at all integrations levels—from molecules to ecosystems. Descriptions on disposal patterns of the past and the present need to be considered as well as explanations of the effects and mechanisms of action of natural and man-made pollutants generally. The interactions of stressors in the marine realm at interfaces with atmosphere, land and freshwaters are of particular multidisciplinary interest. Challenges are provided at most levels of MP: pollution monitoring, treatment, and management, economicial, social, and policy aspects in the protection of the marine environment at national and international levels.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by a collaboration grant of NRF (2012R1A2A2A02012617).

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Keywords: oceanic pollution, stressor, integration, multidisciplinary, systems approach, novelty, innovation

Citation: Dahms HU (2014) The grand challenges in marine pollution research. Front. Mar. Sci . 1 :9. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2014.00009

Received: 28 March 2014; Accepted: 03 May 2014; Published online: 21 May 2014.

Edited and reviewed by: Sami Souissi , University of Lille 1, France Kyung-Hoon Shin , Hanyang University, South Korea

Copyright © 2014 Dahms. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: [email protected]; [email protected]

December 3, 2020

Paper finds ocean pollution is a complex mix of chemicals and materials, primarily land-based in origin, with far-reaching consequences for environmental and human health, but there are options available for world leaders

For centuries, the ocean has been viewed as an inexhaustible receptacle for the byproducts of human activity. Today, marine pollution is widespread and getting worse and, in most countries, poorly controlled with the vast majority of contaminants coming from land-based sources. That’s the conclusion of a new study by an international coalition of scientists taking a hard look at the sources, spread, and impacts of ocean pollution worldwide.

The study is the first comprehensive examination of the impacts of ocean pollution on human health. It was published December 3 in the online edition of the Annals of Global Health and released the same day at the Monaco International Symposium on Human Health & the Ocean in a Changing World, convened in Monaco and online by the Prince Albert II de Monaco Foundation, the Centre Scientifique de Monaco and Boston College.

“This paper is part of a global effort to address questions related to oceans and human health,” said Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) toxicologist and senior scientist John Stegeman who is second author on the paper. “Concern is beginning to bubble up in a way that resembles a pot on the stove. It’s reaching the boiling point where action will follow where it’s so clearly needed.”

Despite the ocean’s size—more than two-thirds of the planet is covered by water—and fundamental importance supporting life on Earth, it is under threat, primarily and paradoxically from human activity. The paper, which draws on 584 peer-reviewed scientific studies and independent reports, examines six major contaminants: plastic waste, oil spills, mercury, manufactured chemicals, pesticides, and nutrients, as well as biological threats including harmful algal blooms and human pathogens.

It finds that ocean chemical pollution is a complex mix of substances, more than 80% of which arises from land-based sources. These contaminants reach the oceans through rivers, surface runoff, atmospheric deposition, and direct discharges and are often heaviest near the coasts and most highly concentrated along the coasts of low- and middle-income countries. Waters most seriously impacted by ocean pollution include the Mediterranean Sea, the Baltic Sea, and Asian rivers. For the many ocean-based ecosystems on which humans rely, these impacts are exacerbated by global climate change. According to the researchers, all of this has led to a worldwide human health impacts that fall disproportionately on vulnerable populations in the Global South, making it a planetary environmental justice problem, as well.

In addition to Stegeman, who is also director of the NSF- and NIH-funded Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health , WHOIbiologists Donald Anderson and Mark Hahn , and chemist Chris Reddy also contributed to the report. Stegeman and the rest of the WHOI team worked on the analysis with researchers from Boston College’s Global Observatory on Pollution and Health, directed by the study’s lead author and Professor of Biology Philip J. Landrigan, MD. Anderson led the report’s section on harmful algal blooms, Hahn contributed to a section on persistent organic pollutants (POPs) with Stegeman, and Reddy led the section on oil spills. The Observatory, which tracks efforts to control pollution and prevent pollution-related diseases that account for 9 million deaths worldwide each year, is a program of the new Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society, part of a $300-million investment in the sciences at BC. Altogether, over 40 researchers from institutions across the United States, Europe and Africa were involved in the report.

In an introduction printed in Annals of Global Health , Prince Albert of Monaco points out that their analysis, in addition to providing a global wake-up, serves as a call to mobilize global resolve to curb ocean pollution and to mount even greater scientific efforts to better understand its causes, impacts, and cures.

“The link between ocean pollution and human health has, for a long time, given rise to very few studies,” he says. “Taking into account the effects of ocean pollution—due to plastic, water and industrial waste, chemicals, hydrocarbons, to name a few—on human health should mean that this threat must be permanently included in the international scientific activity.”

The report concludes with a series of urgent recommendations. It calls for eliminating coal combustion, banning all uses of mercury, banning single-use plastics, controlling coastal discharges, and reducing applications of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. It argues that national, regional and international marine pollution control programs must extend to all countries and where necessary supported by the international community. It calls for robust monitoring of all forms of ocean pollution, including satellite monitoring and autonomous drones. It also appeals for the formation of large, new marine protected areas that safeguard critical ecosystems, protect vulnerable fish stocks, and ultimately enhance human health and well-being.

Most urgently, the report calls upon world leaders to recognize the near-existential threats posed by ocean pollution, acknowledge its growing dangers to human and planetary health, and take bold, evidence-based action to stop ocean pollution at its source.

“The key thing to realize about ocean pollution is that, like all forms of pollution, it can be prevented using laws, policies, technology, and enforcement actions that target the most important pollution sources,” said Professor Philip Landrigan, MD, lead author and Director of the Global Observatory on Pollution on Health and of the Global Public Health and the Common Good Program at Boston College. “Many countries have used these tools and have successfully cleaned fouled harbors, rejuvenated estuaries, and restored coral reefs. The results have been increased tourism, restored fisheries, improved human health, and economic growth. These benefits will last for centuries.”

The report is being released in tandem with the Declaration of Monaco: Advancing Human Health & Well-Being by Preventing Ocean Pollution, which was read at the symposium’s closing session. Endorsed by the scientists, physicians and global stakeholders who participated in the symposium in-person and virtually, the declaration summarizes the key findings and conclusions of the Monaco Commission on Human Health and Ocean Pollution. Based on the recognition that all life on Earth depends on the health of the seas, the authors call on leaders and citizens of all nations to “safeguard human health and preserve our Common Home by acting now to end pollution of the ocean.”

“This paper is a clarion call for all of us to pay renewed attention to the ocean that supports life on Earth and to follow the directions laid out by strong science and a committed group of scientists,” said Rick Murray, WHOI Deputy Director and Vice President for research and a member of the conference steering committee. “The ocean has sustained humanity throughout the course of our evolution—it’s time to return the favor and do what is necessary to prevent further, needless damage to our life planetary support system.”

Funding for this work was provided in part by the U.S. Oceans and Human Health Program (NIH grant P01ES028938 and National Science Foundation grant OCE-1840381), the Centre Scientifique de Monaco, the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation, the Government of the Principality of Monaco, and Boston College.

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is a private, non-profit organization on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, dedicated to marine research, engineering, and higher education. Established in 1930, its primary mission is to understand the ocean and its interaction with the Earth as a whole, and to communicate an understanding of the ocean’s role in the changing global environment. WHOI’s pioneering discoveries stem from an ideal combination of science and engineering—one that has made it one of the most trusted and technically advanced leaders in basic and applied ocean research and exploration anywhere. WHOI is known for its multidisciplinary approach, superior ship operations, and unparalleled deep-sea robotics capabilities. We play a leading role in ocean observation, and operate the most extensive suite of data-gathering platforms in the world. Top scientists, engineers, and students collaborate on more than 800 concurrent projects worldwide—both above and below the waves—pushing the boundaries of knowledge and possibility. For more information, please visit www.whoi.edu

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• Published: 20 October 2023

The NOAA NCEI marine microplastics database

• Ebenezer S. Nyadjro   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8803-5245 1 , 2 ,
• Jennifer A. B. Webster   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0006-6641-1234 2 ,
• Tim P. Boyer 3 ,
• Just Cebrian 1 , 2   nAff5 ,
• Leonard Collazo 2 , 4 ,
• Gunnar Kaltenberger 2 , 4 ,
• Kirsten Larsen 2 ,
• Yee H. Lau 1 , 2 ,
• Paul Mickle 1 , 2 ,
• Tiffany Toft 2 , 4 &
• Zhankun Wang 3  

Scientific Data volume  10 , Article number:  726 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Ocean sciences

Microplastics (<5 mm) pollution is a growing problem affecting coastal communities, marine ecosystems, aquatic life, and human health. The widespread occurrence of marine microplastics, and the need to curb its threats, require expansive, and continuous monitoring. While microplastic research has increased in recent years and generated significant volumes of data, there is a lack of a robust, open access, and long-term aggregation of this data. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) now provides a global open access to marine microplastics data on an easily discoverable and accessible GIS web map and data portal ( https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/microplastics ). The objective of this data portal is to develop a repository where microplastics data are aggregated, archived, and served in a user friendly, consistent, and reliable manner. This work contributes to NCEI’s efforts towards data standardization, integration, harmonization, and interoperability among national and international collaborators for monitoring global marine microplastics. This paper describes the NOAA NCEI global marine microplastics database, its creation, quality control procedures, and future directions.

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Introduction

Microplastics are defined as plastics that are smaller than 5 mm (0.20 in) and are a growing problem affecting coastal communities, marine ecosystems, marine life, and human health 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 . Microplastics have been found in multiple media such as in oceans, rivers, estuaries, lakes, the atmosphere, beaches, sea ice, and sediments 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10 . These small plastics originate either as primary sources from terrestrial runoffs, littering, and industrial discharge of particulates in commercial products in which they occur or as secondary sources from the degradation of large plastics 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 (macroplastics, i.e., >5 mm).

Microplastics affect both the environment and the organisms therein. Microplastics act as vectors for heavy metal contamination, and diseases, thus aggregating and increasing toxicity in the environment 15 , 16 , 17 . Aquatic biota such as plankton, fishes, crabs, clams, shrimps, and mussels ingest microplastics which clog their tissues and organs, thereby affecting their energy reserves, causing neurotoxicity, behavioral abnormalities, stunted growth, decrease reproductivity, and eventual death 18 , 19 . These ingested microplastics can also bioaccumulate in humans through the consumption of seafood, eventually leading to inflammation, cell damage, and oxidative stress in humans 20 , 21 . Recently, there have been reported findings of microplastics in human placenta with dire effects on fetal development 22 . The breakdown of microplastics can result in the leaching of toxins which seeps into sediments or kill organisms 23 , 24 .

In addition to the harm to aquatic organisms and the environment, microplastics pollution affects economies in many ways, including clean-up costs, decline in fisheries and coastal tourism 25 , 26 , 27 . Over time, lost fishing gear breaks down through abrasion and biofouling resulting in the release of microplastic fragments and fibers 24 . Fishes consuming these pieces of microplastics can expose themselves to toxic chemicals 28 , 29 . Seafood is the main source of animal protein for approximately 20% of the global population 30 (1.4 billion people). Marine microplastics therefore endanger this source of protein by reducing the efficiency and productivity of aquaculture and commercial fisheries through fish mortality.

Borrelle et al . 31 estimates that about 19 to 23 million metric tons, or 11%, of plastic waste (i.e., the main source of microplastics) generated globally in 2016, entered aquatic ecosystems, with this estimate expected to increase to 53 million metric tons per year by 2030. Beaumont et al . 30 estimates a loss in marine ecosystem services between $3,300-$33,000 for each metric ton of plastic entering the ocean per year. At these rates, the economic cost of marine plastic pollution runs into several billions of dollars per year.

The increasing concern about microplastic pollution has led to a rapid research growth in this area in recent years, generating a large volume of data. To illustrate this trend, a Web of Science (WoS) database search using the keywords microplastic OR microplastics, along with the “All Fields” option was performed. Considering only English language “Articles” and “Review Articles” related to environmental microplastics, the search yielded 10,883 articles published between 1964 (first record of publication in WoS) and 2022 (Fig.  1 ). Among these articles, less than a hundred papers were published during the first four decades of the record keeping. Thereafter, the number of publications gradually increased until a rapid growth in the last five years. Indeed, the number of publications in 2022 (i.e., 3,405) was over three-fold that of 2019 (i.e., 1,042) (Fig.  1 ).

Number of microplastic publications between 1964–2022.

Despite the growing awareness and increase in microplastic research, a lack of large-scale, long-term, comprehensive data hinder a complete understanding of the sources, distribution, and impacts of microplastics. Even when available, the management of marine debris data, from large size visual surveys along the coast and in the open ocean, to effects of microplastics on planktonic communities, the blue economy, among others, lags far behind the needs of the scientific, education, and decision-maker communities 27 , 32 . The European Union’s EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network) marine litter database 33 ( https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/chemistry ) archives and offers downloadable microplastic data as part of its floating microlitter collection. This database is however limited to only data from European waters. Another product, LITTERBASE 34 ( https://litterbase.awi.de/ ), developed by the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Germany, offers a global map and data analysis of marine microplastics from peer-reviewed scientific publications and a limited number of reports. This product does not however include non-published data, archives original data nor offers users the ability to download the data. A proposed ocean surface microplastic database by the Ministry of Environment of Japan (MOEJ) is also yet to be launched. The lack of comprehensive data on the spatial and temporal variability of microplastics is also a challenge for numerical modeling of their occurrence as a way to effectively understand and forecast their origins, trajectory, and aggregation 23 , 35 . Subsequently, there is the need for a well curated, expansive, and FAIR 36 (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) database to facilitate the understanding and control of microplastic pollution.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)’s microplastics data stewardship project was started in January 2020 to obtain, aggregate, and archive global microplastic data. The microplastics website and database were launched in July 2021. This database collates microplastic data from large ocean surveys, citizen-science led initiatives, and published literature sources, which provides students, scientists, environmentalists, policy makers, and others, a robust, and open access repository for archived information needed in marine microplastics debris monitoring. One priority in creating the NOAA NCEI microplastic database is data access. The increased awareness of microplastic impacts on the environment and human health has led to a surge in microplastic research. Therefore, open access to the large amount of data generated is crucial to enable a broad, comprehensive assessment of the environmental issue. A FAIR microplastic database will enhance a uniform global understanding of the environmental problem 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 . In turn, it will aid in formulating management policies around the generation, handling, and disposal of microplastics.

A recent study by Jenkins et al . 39 reported that only 28.5% of microplastic publications since 2006 contained a data sharing statement. Of this number, 38.8% provided their study data in the paper’s supplementary material and 13.8% through a data repository. In summary, the need to improve open access to microplastic data is monumental. An overarching goal of the microplastics product is to establish NCEI as the primary location for open access, comprehensive, quality-controlled global microplastics data and information. This effort along with other NCEI archived data (e.g., Global Ocean Current Database, Blended Seawinds, World Ocean Database, etc.), will serve a diverse international customer base to attain a holistic understanding of the global microplastic problem. In this paper, we present the NOAA NCEI global marine microplastics database, its creation, quality control procedures, and future directions.

The NOAA NCEI microplastics database contains only in-situ measured marine microplastic concentrations. Data from animal tissues, model output and laboratory experiments are not included. At present, the database contains data from only the surface ocean. Recognizing microplastics are not only in surface ocean waters, our future goal is to broaden the database to include data from different ocean depths, ocean sediments, and beaches. This expansion will enable a more comprehensive understanding of microplastics in the marine environment.

The database has two levels: archive and geodatabase. All microplastic data received are ingested into the NOAA NCEI archive after initial quality control and guaranteed to be available for at least 75 years. Next, the data are homogenized and added to the geodatabase which is displayed on the NCEI microplastics ArcGIS web portal. The archive provides more detailed information about individual datasets (Fig.  2 ), allowing in-depth exploration for interested categories of users such as scientists, graduate students, coastal managers, and policy makers. The ArcGIS geodatabase and web portal on the other hand is geared more towards a general audience. As such, not all metadata associated with an archived microplastic dataset is provided on the web portal.

An example of a screenshot from an archived dataset collected in the Southern Ocean from 2016-11-28 to 2017-07-27, showing detailed information on how the data was collected, quality-controlled and analyzed. (Credit 9 : https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/archive/accession/0253447 ).

Archive display interface

A user-friendly interface displays the detailed metadata information about individual datasets in the archive. These information include a title for the data submission, investigators and their affiliations, package description, a map showing study area and sampling locations, data citation, temporal coverage, spatial coverage, platforms, keywords, identification information, funding information, and variable metadata section 40 , 41 . The variable metadata section contains details on how the data was collected, quality- controlled and analyzed (Fig.  2 ). The archive display interface also contains HTTPS and FTP links to download the data package.

To ensure uniformity and ease of use, the titles of archived datasets follow the following template: “[observed properties] collected from [research vessels or other platforms] in [sea names] from [start date] to [end date]. In the screenshot of an archive display interface shown in Fig.  2 , the data package title is “ Floating microplastics concentration collected from AKADEMIK TRYOSHNIKOV and S.A. AGULHAS II in the Southern Ocean from 2016-11-28 to 2017-07-27 ” 9 .

ArcGIS geodatabase and web portal

The web portal contains the homogenized microplastic data. This interface uses user-friendly features such as dropdown menus, display filters, selection and drawing tools, and maps, to enhance the user experience of searching for microplastic data. A detailed help document is provided on the web portal to help users to navigate the site and download data.

As of June 2023, the database contains about 14,000 microplastic records. Each data record represents the concentration of microplastics (counts of pieces/m³) in a given space and time. Other information provided include the sampling equipment, collecting organization, key words associated with the record (e.g., ship name), and reference to original sources including bibliographic digital object identifiers (DOI) (Table  1 ). The database is publicly accessible from https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/b296879cc1984fda833a8acc93e31476 and can be downloaded (CSV, JSON, and GeoJSON formats) in its entirety or subsampled using filters (e.g. date, oceans, and seas, microplastic concentration, or sampling methods). The database is currently updated quarterly.

The “NCEI Accession No. Link” directs the user to the original data package associated with the record in the NCEI archives. Here, the user can obtain in-depth information on how the record was obtained, quality controlled, and processed by the data collector.

With the “Concentration class range” and “Concentration class text”, we classify the microplastic concentrations (pieces/m³) in the database (Table  2 ). The classes are determined based on statistical characteristics and distributions of the database records such as minimum, mean, maximum, standard deviation, and interquartile range. The concentration class range and text of a record is therefore dynamic as more data is added and the statistical characteristics of the entire database change.

Data sources

While it continues to grow, at the time of this manuscript writing, the NOAA NCEI microplastic database has collated information from 33 datasets, all from peer-reviewed published papers of 23 unique lead authors. 30 of the datasets were obtained by email solicitations while 3 were self-reported. 4 of the 33 datasets were collected by citizen science initiatives; The Ocean Race (formerly known as Volvo Ocean Race ), Adventure Scientists , Surfing for Science , and Oceaneye Association . Most of the data records were collected from local and regional studies. Although the Ocean Race dataset provides a near-global snapshot of floating microplastic distribution, it does not cover all ocean sub-basins 42 .

Spatial and temporal coverage

The NOAA NCEI microplastic database is global, containing records from Arctic, Atlantic, Indian, Pacific, and Southern Oceans (Fig.  3 ). Most of the records are from the Atlantic Ocean (62%) with the least from the Southern Ocean (0.2%) (Table  3 ). At the time of this manuscript writing, the records were collected from 4/20/1972 to 10/5/2021, with the bulk (72%) collected in the post 2000 era (Fig.  4 ). Nearly all of the pre 2000 records were collected in the North Atlantic Ocean by the Sea Education Association (SEA), Massachusetts, USA 1 . The exceptions are ~45 records collected in the northeast Pacific Ocean in the 1970’s 43 .

A screenshot showing the NOAA NCEI microplastic database GIS web portal with microplastic concentrations.

Number of microplastic records in the NOAA NCEI database.

As described in the Methods section, several steps are taken to ensure that the microplastic concentrations ingested into the NCEI database are of the highest standards. The NOAA NCEI Send2NCEI 44 (S2N) data submission platform includes fields that allow only certain values and formats. This minimizes data entry and spelling errors. In addition, data submitters are contacted on ambiguities in their data such as duplicates, and outliers. Furthermore, the dataset is checked by multiple curators and subject matter experts, prior to being served to the public.

The field of microplastics research is quite young. Although there has been immense expansion of research activities and volume of data generated in recent times, there are still no uniform standards for data collection, analyses, and reporting. The growing interest in this contaminant has led to the development of several microplastic study methods, each with its own strengths and weaknesses 38 . Due to the stark variations in microplastic origin, density, chemical properties, morphology, size and color, there is no single combination of methods for sampling, extracting, analyzing, and reporting 38 , 39 , 45 , 46 . Thus, the microplastic concentrations in the database may not always be comparable across studies. Users should consider using data records along with more detailed metadata in the archives (such as sampling protocols and instrumental analysis, e.g., shown in Fig.  2 ) for further investigation of data usability.

Importance of measuring and reporting standards

An example data compatibility issue observed while compiling the microplastics database is the inconsistency in data reporting standards such as the units of measurements. Units found in the literature include counts of pieces/m³, counts of pieces/km 2 , counts of pieces/km³, counts of pieces/g, g/km 2 , g/m 3 , among others. This lack of consistency creates problems for the research community and interest groups trying to compare records and to form composite datasets. Data harmonization will help merge multiple studies and synthesize information for a better understanding and regulation of the global microplastic problem. NCEI’s efforts to help address these shortcomings include providing a comprehensive microplastic database that gives an overview of the sampling efforts and helps identify the areas to standardize data collection and reporting to enable data harmonization. Standardization will help resolve the calibration needs for datasets with different methodologies, which will expand sharing, scalability, and utility of microplastic data. It will also enhance the fidelity and reproducibility of research results and success at obtaining grant funding for further studies. To achieve these, the standards ought to be consensus based, consistent, and based on best scientific practices.

The need and urgency to standardize and harmonize microplastic data collection, analysis, and reporting have led to a number of national and regional initiatives. Aside the NOAA NCEI’s effort, there are also the European Union’s EUROqCHARM (EUROpean quality Controlled Harmonization Assuring Reproducible Monitoring and assessment of plastic pollution; https://www.euroqcharm.eu/en ) project, and the MOEJ guidelines for harmonizing ocean surface microplastic monitoring methods project 32 , 47 . On a global scale, the Global Partnership on Plastic Pollution and Marine Litter (GPML; https://www.gpmarinelitter.org/ ), a multi-stakeholder partnership under the United Nations Environmental Program, is leading efforts at bringing together all the aforementioned groups and others, unto a common platform for cooperation and coordination to share ideas, knowledge, experiences, and resources towards harmonizing microplastic data

Harmonization of current microplastic data products (i.e., EMODnet, LITTERBASE, and NCEI) starts by leveraging the common variables in the individual databases. These include sampling date, latitude, longitude, and sampling methods. Microplastic abundance is however not reported in common units among the different databases. Thus, data harmonization will involve performing unit conversions, among others, in order to have variables with a limited set of measurement units. Both the EMODnet and NCEI products provide users with access to the original and harmonized data while the LITTERBASE product does not archive the original data. In the case of the NCEI product, the archived data retains its original unit reported by the data owner while the harmonized data in the geodatabase (i.e., web portal) are converted to a common format (i.e., pieces/m 3 ) where possible. For the LITTERBASE product, data is typically provided in units of items/km², items/km, items/m³ and other dimensions are converted to these units where possible for comparison. In a situation where microplastic measurements were provided in several dimensions (e.g., count and weight), LITTERBASE uses a preferred unit of items/km 2 . Also, for datasets that LITTERBASE considered to be spatially extensive, these were aggregated to means for subareas 34 . In summary, a unified guideline is needed in order to provide a FAIR and homogenized global microplastic data.

Citizen science vs professional scientific research studies

Most of the records we have were obtained from professional scientific research studies, which can be time consuming, expensive, challenging, geographically limited, and seasonally driven 48 , 49 . There is, however, a growing interest and potential from citizen science initiatives for microplastic data collection 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 . When properly trained and harnessed, the enthusiasm of these groups can generate substantial data which will contribute towards a more informed, comprehensive understanding of microplastic occurrence and distribution. Involving citizen scientists also creates awareness outside of the professional scientific research community, increases engagement on environmental issues and promotes a community-based approach to environmental pollution management 48 , 49 .

Citizen science initiatives often adopt innovative measures to involve individuals through social and sports activities to collect microplastic samples. For example, the Surfing for Science citizen science project attached affordable and easy to use manta trawls on paddle surf boards, kayaks, and rowing boats to acquire microplastic samples 3 . Similarly, The Ocean Race initiative used two yachts ( Turn the Tide on Plastic and AkzoNobel ) that were competing in a race around the world as ships of opportunity to collect 96 microplastic samples during their circumnavigation 42 . The Adventure Scientists initiative used trained citizen scientists for an opportunistic collection of 1,628 1-liter glass jar grab samples across several locations such as shorelines, estuaries and offshore 49 .

Data acquisition and submission

At a minimum, we require data with sampling dates (year, month, and day), sampling location geographic coordinates, mesh size, and microplastic concentrations. Data submission and inclusion in the NOAA NCEI microplastic database is freely opened to the public. It is not restricted to only US-based researchers, or projects funded by NOAA or other US funding agencies. Data generated from both grant funded, and non-grant funded projects are welcome. Likewise, data from professional or non-professional scientists (e.g., citizen scientists) are all welcome. Both published and unpublished microplastic datasets are accepted and included in the database. All of the above data sources and kinds are subjected to the same rigorous quality assessment and quality control standards.

We obtain microplastic data predominantly in two ways; self-reporting by data owners and email solicitation requests to data owners. Self-reporting is typically done through the NCEI S2N web portal. This is an archiving tool that allows the data owner to easily submit their data files, metadata, and related documentation to NCEI for long term preservation, stewardship, and access. S2N thus helps the data owner meet any funding requirements for data documentation, sharing, and archiving 44 . S2N includes controlled vocabularies that enables accurate data findability. It also allows the creation of a user profile which enhances data submitter’s ease of use by retaining records of previous submissions and allowing it to be duplicated to start a new submission.

Data acquisition through email requests begins by NCEI scientists identifying suitable microplastic datasets. The scientists perform literature searches from online reference and citation databases such as Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar using the keywords microplastic, microplastics, plastic, and plastics in the title, abstract and keywords. Identified research papers are then reviewed to ensure they (1) contain microplastic data, (2) are collected from the ambient marine water environment, (3) do not include data from animal tissues, (4) are in-situ data and not model output or laboratory experiment, and (5) use appropriate sampling and analytical methodologies such as those outlined below. If a paper is suitable, the corresponding authors are contacted through emails to obtain their permissions for data to be included into the NOAA archive and geodatabase, and freely and openly redistributed without restriction. When permission is granted, the data are archived on behalf of the owner using S2N. If an identified, suitable research paper uses secondary data, we contact the original data owner for their permission and cite the original data owner.

In addition, we find unpublished data by making inquiries to specific Citizen science groups, initiatives, and researchers. This includes direct contact with presenters at webinars, workshops, and conferences. Those data sampling methods are reviewed against sampling protocols found in published literature. If the sampling methods and protocols are in line with those of peer review publications, they are ingested into both the archive and the geodatabase. If the methods used by a study are too different from what is widely adopted in the literature, the data is archived but not added to the geodatabase.

Data licensing

The NOAA NCEI microplastics database publishes only data that the owners have given explicit permissions to be made completely open and freely available to the public. All submitted data are under conditions of Creative Commons (CC) CC0 (i.e., open access) and CC-BY 4.0 (i.e., cite data source) licenses, or their equivalents, wherein the data is completely open, freely accessible to the public, and users are asked to cite the original data source. Any license assigned by the data source is identified in the metadata maintained and redistributed by NCEI. NCEI does not assign data licenses of any type to original data acquired by NCEI because only the data source can provide the license for the original data, not NCEI. NCEI may transform, reconfigure, or otherwise do quality checks/flags on original source data prior to including that source data into the microplastics database, thus adding value to the overall quality of output data from the microplastics database. NCEI applies a CC0 license to the NCEI microplastics database product, which provides specific attribution for each data package that was contributed to develop the NCEI microplastics product. Because NCEI does not include original data in the NCEI data product that applies a more restrictive license, there is little likelihood of a conflict between an originator’s license and the NCEI license.

There are instances where some scientific journals require researchers to submit their data to a repository prior to submitting their manuscripts. In this case, NCEI can archive the data and not make it discoverable to the public. After the publication of the said manuscript, the author informs NCEI, and the data then becomes discoverable and freely available to the public.

Each dataset archived at NCEI has an associated data citation. In both the archives and microplastic web portal, citation is given to the data owner. The data citation is consistent with the guidelines and recommendations of FORCE11 53 and DataCite ( https://datacite.org/ ), and contains information such as list of authors, title of the data package, publication year, data repository, NCEI accession number, and an optional DOI 40 , 41 . For a submitted data that already has a DOI, that DOI is maintained. While DOI is highly recommended for all submitted datasets, for those that do not have one, the data owner is given the option of whether a DOI should be minted for it or not.

Quality assessment and quality control

Evaluating sampling and analytical procedures.

Both self-reported and solicited data are subjected to quality assessment and quality control to ensure correctness and completeness before archiving. At present, there are no globally-defined uniform standards for microplastic data. As such, we assess the study that collected the data by evaluating the sampling methods and strategy, sample size, sample handling, processing and storage, laboratory preparations, negative and positive controls, sample treatment, and particle and polymer identification 38 , 46 , 54 , 55 , 56 , 57 .

We check that the sampling methods and strategies are clearly defined and reproducible. Known microplastics sampling methods include selective sampling, volume-reduced sampling, and bulk sampling 6 , 58 . In selective sampling, microplastics are directly extracted from samples by visual identification. In volume-reduced sampling the samples are filtered or sieved at the sampling location and only the targeted components are transported to the laboratory. In bulk sampling, the entire volume of the sample is taken and is considered the best method when the abundance of microplastic is small 6 . Examples of instruments used for microplastics sampling include manta net, neuston net, plankton net, bongo net, multiple opening–closing net, continuous plankton recorder, aluminum bucket, stainless steel bucket, glass bottles and jars, and water pump/intake through vessel system 2 , 4 , 38 . We confirm that the mesh size used for sampling and/ filtering was less than 5 mm in order to capture microplastics. The most commonly used net mesh sizes are 333–335 µm 59 .

The water volume that was sampled should be reported to aid the computation of microplastic concentration. Sufficient water volume should be sampled as microplastics are heterogeneously distributed 60 . We assess that the sample volume size is representative of the sampling objectives, methods (instruments), strategy, and location. For example, grab sampling collects more microplastic particles than trawl nets. Also, smaller mesh sizes retain more microplastics than larger mesh sizes 2 , 45 , 61 . In one instance, Barrows et al . 2 observed that grab sampling collected over three orders of magnitude more microplastics per volume of water and smaller sizes than neuston net sampling. Ideally, the study should collect replicate samples providing a measure of variability in sample collection and a statistically robust analysis of data 62 . The number of replicates and how they were nested within samples should also be reported.

We evaluate the procedures that were used to handle, store, and process the microplastic samples to ensure that contamination from the field and the laboratory (air, water, and materials) were eliminated. We ensure that the study used non-plastic instruments for data collection and for laboratory analysis 6 , 37 , 46 . Between the moment a sample is collected and examination in the laboratory, the sample should be stored on ice or frozen 46 , 56 . Samples can also be preserved in a glass container with ethanol, formalin, or formaldehyde 56 . Materials that were used such as equipment, tools, clothing, and work surfaces ought to be free of microplastics contamination. This includes wearing cotton or non-synthetic clothes, and thoroughly washing materials and cleaning work surfaces with ultrapure water (e.g., Milli-Q water) and filtered solvents 6 , 63 , 64 . The study must also report the use of field and laboratory blanks to account for procedural contamination 46 , 65 . The reported microplastic concentration should account for the controls by deducting the baseline by microplastic count, shape, color, and polymer type 65 .

We assess if the study adopted procedures that enhance particle identification and counting. Sample treatment includes organic digestion, density separation, sieving and filtering 62 , 66 , 67 . Sieving is usually enough for particles >300 µm as the sizes are large enough to allow for adequate sorting. Organic digestion may be needed to dissolve organic matter in some samples especially for the detection of small microplastics (typically <300 µm 56 ). Organic digestion methods may include the wet peroxide oxidation (WPO) method which uses aqueous 0.05 M Fe (II) solution and 30% H 2 O 2 solution to digest organic materials 63 . Other studies may involve the use of 10% KOH solution as well as enzymatic digestion methods 68 . Once organic materials are removed from the sample, the authors should mention what instruments were used for visual identification and quantification of microplastics. The instrument detection limits should also be reported.

We note if the study reports the shapes and polymer types of microplastics encountered. While not currently a focus in our database, it may be in the future as this field evolves. Microplastic shapes include fiber, fragment, film, foam, and pellet 2 , 38 , 56 . Microplastic polymer types include polypropylene (PP), low density polyethylene (LDPE), high density polyethylene (HDPE), polystyrene (PS), polyamide (PA; nylon), polyethylene terephthalate (PET), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) 46 , 66 , 69 . Researchers should report confirmation of microplastics using chemical characterization methods such as Raman and Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy 6 . Particle counts with confidence intervals, detection limits for the count and for minimum particle size, polymer types and percentages (of different polymer types, of synthetic vs natural material), and particle sizes should also be reported 56 . It is noted that not all samples collected in a study can be confirmed using these technologies due to logistical constraints, costs, etc. Nevertheless, a reasonable subsample should be confirmed for microplastic polymer type. Hermsen et al . 56 recommends that for pre-sorted particles less than 100, all particles should be analyzed. For particles more than 100, at least 50% should be identified with a minimum of 100 particles.

Evaluating sampled data

After examining the sampling and analytical procedures, we evaluate the microplastic data. We check that the data contains the minimum requirements: sampling dates (year, month, and day), sampling location geographic coordinates, mesh size, and microplastic concentrations. Environmental (e.g., wind conditions) or logistical factors that may affect the interpretation of results should also be reported 70 , 71 . We check that the value of each record item matches the data type and confer with the data submitter on any ambiguity. We also verify that the data are plastics less than 5 mm, collected from the ocean surface and within valid geographical limits (i.e., latitude is between 90°S and 90°N and longitude is between 180°W and 180°E decimal degrees). Finally, we flag duplicate data for further consultation with the data submitter.

Sampled microplastic concentrations depend on factors such as study objectives, study area, sampling time, sampling instruments, sampling strategies, and analytical methods 2 , 38 , 57 , 61 . We ensure that the reported microplastic concentrations are within a reasonable range with respect to findings in published literature. Outlier data points (e.g., higher than usual ranges seen in published literature) are flagged for further consultation with the data submitter. We accept microplastic data that are reported in concentration units (i.e., counts of pieces per unit volume). Particle counts (as opposed to total mass/weight) are more convenient to link with toxicity studies since it makes it easier to calculate concentrations of specific microplastic types 46 , 62 . Concentration units other than counts of pieces/m³ (e.g., counts of pieces/km 2 , counts of pieces/km³) are converted to pieces/m³ (using information from the study such as dimensions of sample collection instrument) for data harmonization. Submitted microplastic data that are reported as weight are archived but not displayed on the geodatabase map portal due to harmonization challenges with other data.

Conversion of units from surface area (e.g., counts of pieces/km 2 ) to volume (i.e., counts of pieces/m³) for data harmonization potentially creates biases and also limits comparison with some datasets. Microplastic measurements per unit area appears to be the commonly used unit for data collected with nets (i.e., areal sampling, e.g., Lavender Law et al . 2 ; Reisser et al . 11 ; Eriksen et al . 13 ) while measurements per unit volume appears to be the commonly used unit for data collected by other means such as buckets, bottles, and pumps (i.e., point/station/grab sampling, e.g., Osorio et al . 72 ; Setiti et al . 73 ). Because our database contains data collected with all these different instruments and sampling methods, we convert to a common unit of measurements per unit volume for harmonization in the geodatabase (web portal), while maintaining the original unit in the archive. It should be mentioned that there are several datasets (e.g., Goldstein et al . 43 ; Faure et al . 50 ; de Haan et al . 3 ; Suaria et al . 9 ) where data was collected with nets and the submitted data from the owner are reported in both measurements per unit area and measurements per unit volume (i.e., the unit conversions in this instance were not done by NCEI).

Microplastic data unit conversion comes with challenges. For example, the water volume sampled by nets could be misrepresented as the position of a net’s frame varies over water surface, especially in the presence of waves, thus the net (or even a volumeter), may not be entirely submerged in the water. There are advantages and disadvantages of each of the different microplastic sampling methods (as we have previously mentioned) and the microplastic research community is still deliberating on a possible unified unit of measure and standards of reporting. One of our aims in creating this database is to aggregate the different data types and allied information, which will hopefully generate enough information to help the research and end-user communities reach a consensus on standards. We have a notice on our website and help pages alerting users to use the geodatabase alongside the archive which contains the data in its original units submitted by the data owner.

Data availability

The NOAA NCEI microplastic concentrations data is publicly available at https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/b296879cc1984fda833a8acc93e31476 , under the CC-BY 4.0 license.

The NOAA NCEI web portal can be viewed at https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/microplastics . Here, the user can also find a detailed help document to navigate the site and download data. Microplastic data owners can also find information and links here to submit their data for archiving and inclusion into the database.

Code availability

Not applicable.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all data providers and their institutions who have contributed their data to the NOAA NCEI microplastics database. Abigail Barrows (Adventure Scientists, USA), Dimitar Berov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences), William P. de Haan (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain), Matthias Egger (The Ocean Cleanup, Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Marcus Eriksen (Five Gyres Institute, USA), Florian Faure (Oceaneye Association, Geneva, Switzerland), Miriam C. Goldstein (Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, USA), Kara Lavender Law (Sea Education Association, USA), Jingli Mu (National Marine Environmental Monitoring Center, China), Alonzo Alfaro Nunez (University of Copenhagen, Denmark), Ezra D. Osorio (University of the Philippines Diliman), Zhong Pan (Third Institute of Oceanography, China), Maria Luiza Pedrotti (Sorbonne Universités, France), Arnaldo Fabrício dos Santos Queiroz (Universidade Federal do Para, Brazil), Julia Reisser (University of Western Australia, Perth), Marie Russell (Marine Scotland Science), Skander Setiti (University Campus of Dely Ibrahim, Algeria), Giuseppe Suaria (Institute of Marine Sciences – National Research Council, Italy), Toste Tanhua (GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Germany), Kostas Tsiaras (Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece), Noam van der Hal (University of Haifa, Israel), Shaopeng Xu (City University of Hong Kong), Evgeniy Yakushev (Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Moscow, Russia), Christina Zeri (Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Greece). We are grateful to Donald Collins and Derek J. Hanson, NOAA, for useful input on aspects of the manuscript. The Northern Gulf Institute, Mississippi State University is supported by NOAA grant G00005988. ESN was partly supported by an Early-Career Research Fellowship from the Gulf Research Program of the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (Grant agreement #2000012639). Two anonymous reviewers and a member of the editorial board made useful comments and suggestions that improved the manuscript.

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Nyadjro, E.S., Webster, J.A.B., Boyer, T.P. et al. The NOAA NCEI marine microplastics database. Sci Data 10 , 726 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-02632-y

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Sdg 14: life below water- viable oceans necessary for a sustainable planet.

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The Chesapeake Bay Plastic Survey is intended to assess the necessity and to generate a baseline for a future monitoring effort for plastics pollution trends in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Awarded the Woodward and Curran’s Impact Grant, Ocean Research Project will assess bay-wide plastic pollution by exploring plastic particle count as a water quality indicator for monitoring future bay health. In cooperation with its partners, ORP hopes to repeat this project biannually to enrich understanding of the Bay-wide magnitude of plastic pollution, export to the ocean, and how that is changing relative to Bay improvements and climate change.

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To better understand the nature of plastic debris in the Ocean, ORP has conducted multiple research expeditions in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. ORP completed its first marine debris research expedition in 2013. During this trip, its crew spent 70 days sailing in the Atlantic Ocean, collecting samples of plastic trash in the water and mapping out the eastern side of the North Atlantic garbage patch. The following year, ORP embarked upon a second expedition to research microplastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean. During this trip, ORP’s crew sailed 6,800 miles nonstop from San Francisco to Yokohama, Japan, collecting microplastic samples along the trans-pacific route.

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Does marine environmental research meet the challenges of marine pollution induced by the COVID-19 pandemic? Comparison analysis before and during the pandemic based on bibliometrics

a School of Economics and Management, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, People's Republic of China

b Institute of Carbon Neutrality Economics and Energy Management, School of Economics and Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi, Xinjiang 830046, People's Republic of China

c Institute for Energy Economics and Policy, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao 266580, People's Republic of China

Rongrong Li

Xue-ting jiang.

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The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has brought enormous challenges to the global marine environment. Various responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have led to increased marine pollution. Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected marine pollution research? This work comprehensively reviewed marine pollution publications in the Web of Science database before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results show that the COVID-19 outbreak has influenced the marine pollution research by: (i) increasing the number of publications; (ii) reshaping different countries' roles in marine pollution research; (iii) altering the hotspots of marine pollution research. The ranking of countries with high productivity in the marine pollution research field changed, and developed economies are the dominant players both before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in this field. Other high-productivity countries, with the exception of China, have higher international cooperation rates in marine pollution research than those before the pandemic. Microplastic pollution has been the biggest challenge of marine pollution and has been aexplored in greater depth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, the mining results of marine pollution publications show the mitigation of plastic pollution in the marine environment remains the main content requires future research. Finally, this paper puts forward corresponding suggestions for the reference of researchers and practitioners to improve the global ability to respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic to the marine environment.

Graphical abstract

1. Introduction

The ocean is not only an important part of the ecological environment, but also one of the crucial natural resources for human survival. Marine pollution has long been a global concern, particularly pollution of the marine environment caused by plastic waste ( Dobaradaran et al., 2018 ). Plastics absorb toxic substances as they travel through the environment ( Luo et al., 2022 ; Suman et al., 2021 ), prompting the synthetic polymers in the ocean identified as hazardous waste ( Lim, 2021 ; Zaman and Newman, 2021 ). Only 9 % of global plastic production is identified as recycled ( Parker, 2018 ), 12 % is incinerated, and the remaining 79 % ends up in the environment ( Geyer et al., 2017 ). The remaining pollution causes at least 14 million tons of plastic entering the ocean each year ( IUCN, 2021 ). According to a UNEP report, plastic is the largest, most harmful, and most persistent component of marine litter, accounting for at least 85 % of total marine litter. And plastic pollution in oceans and other bodies of water continues to rise dramatically, with estimates indicating that it will more than double by 2030 ( Nations, 2021 ; UNEP, 2021 ). As a result, the marine ecosystem is under increasing threat, and the issue of marine environmental pollution must be addressed.

However, hazardous plastic wastes for medical use during the COVID-19 shock are currently aggravating marine environmental pollution. There has been an unprecedented increase in the production, consumption, and disposal of single-use plastics (SUPs) and personal protective equipment (PPE) ( Ardusso et al., 2021 ; De-la-Torre et al., 2022b ). A large number of plastic debris enters the global ocean and have been destroying marine ecosystems ( Chowdhury et al., 2021 ), posing a new threat to the marine environment. Recent research provides evidence that the overuse of PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating plastic pollution in the marine environment ( De-la-Torre and Aragaw, 2021 ). Numerous media and publications have reported an increase in the use of PPE such as masks, gloves, face shields, and SUP items on beaches, coastlines, and rivers ( Akhbarizadeh et al., 2021 ; CNN, 2020 ; De-la-Torre et al., 2021 ; Euronews, 2020 ; Hajiouni et al., 2022 ; Okuku et al., 2021 ). Research reveals that 193 countries/regions around the world generated more than 8 million tons of plastic waste since the outbreak of the COVID-19 shock, additionally causing more than 25,000 tons of plastic waste have entered the global ocean. The majority of the plastic comes from hospital waste generated during the pandemic ( Peng et al., 2021 ).

Despite the fact that many countries have proposed management measures for marine pollution ( Ariana et al., 2021 ; Clayton et al., 2021 ; Pettipas et al., 2016 ; Xanthos and Walker, 2017 ), the outbreak of COVID-19 has hampered marine pollution research. There is an urgent need to understand its impacts on marine environment associated with the COVID-19. To address this, numerous studies on the COVID-19 and marine pollution have been conducted in response to the current crisis. For example, some studies investigated the marine environment challenges caused by increased waste during the COVID-19 ( Benson et al., 2021 ; Chowdhury et al., 2021 ; De-la-Torre and Aragaw, 2021 ), some discussed how to solve the marine plastic pollution crisis caused by COVID-19 ( Ammendolia and Walker, 2022 ; Azevedo-Santos et al., 2021 ); some research evaluated chemical and physical changes in masks and gloves recovered from the marine environment ( De-la-Torre et al., 2022a ; Pizarro-Ortega et al., 2022 ).

Furthermore, many scholars have reviewed the relevant literature on marine pollution in the existing research. Wu et al., for example, reviewed marine microplastic research to identify research hotspots and research gaps ( Wu et al., 2021 ). Cesarano et al. systematically reviewed the scientific literature on marine beach debris and explored its temporal development and geographic distribution ( Cesarano et al., 2021 ). Kasavan et al. used bibliometrics to investigate the research trends and research hotspots of plastic pollution in aquatic ecosystems ( Kasavan et al., 2021 ). However, to the best of our knowledge, few studies have systematically reviewed COVID-19 and marine pollution research to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on marine pollution research. To fill this gap, this study synthesized the existing body of knowledge in this field based on published articles and research findings, with the goal of investigating whether the COVID-19 pandemic has changed marine pollution research by comparing the research status before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper specifically seeks to answer the following three questions: (1) Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected the output trend of publications on marine pollution? (2) Has the performance of marine pollution research in various regions changed since the COVID-19 pandemic? (3) What are the differences in marine pollution research hotspots before and during the COVID-19 pandemic?

2. Material and methods

2.1. research design.

The relevant literature on marine pollution was systematically reviewed in the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection database, focusing on the publication output pattern, the global research landscape and the research hotspots. In addition, five datasets were created and compared to better explore the changes in marine pollution research prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic, marine pollution research publications during (a) January 1, 2010–December 31, 2021; (b) January 1, 2010–December 31, 2019; (c) January 1, 2015–December 31, 2019; (d) January 1, 2020–December 31, 2021; and (e) January 1, 2018–December 31, 2019.

To ensure the article's timeliness and relevance, we chose January 1, 2020 as the starting point for COVID-19. As a result, the marine pollution research status during the COVID-19 period was analyzed using the publications dataset from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021.

In the global research landscape comparative analysis, datasets cover the period between January 1, 2010 and December 31, 2019 and January 1, 2015 to December 31, 2019 were used as long-term and medium-term publication identification indicators prior to COVID-19, respectively. Furthermore, to align with the rapid changes in research content, we compared and analyzed the research hotspots from 2018 to 2019 with those from the COVID-19 pandemic concerning the research theme of marine pollution. Fig. 1 depicts the study's specific research framework.

Workflow of the system analysis.

2.2. Methodology

2.2.1. bibliometrics and visual analysis.

Bibliometric analysis is a method of evaluating research output and developing a thorough understanding of current scientific output. Bibliometric analysis has become an indispensable tool for measuring scientific progress for its advantage of integrating qualitative and quantitative analysis ( van Raan, 2005 ). As a result, we used bibliometric analysis in this study to objectively capture and summarize the marine pollution research.

Visual analysis demonstrates results by mapping the knowledge domain. Visual analysis reveals the dynamic of relevant literature and translating the complex knowledge into a visual knowledge map. There are numerous visualization software tools to assist with bibliometric analysis. CiteSpace is one of the most widely applied visualization programs that combines data mining algorithms, bibliometrics and information visualization ( Kou et al., 2021 ). Given the fact that keywords are typically the core and essence of an article, serving as a high-level summary and refinement of the article's topic. The keywords clustering view visually classifies the research fields from various perspectives, providing easier access to researchers among complex data information. As a result, we used the CiteSpace software's keyword cluster diagram to track the research hotspots and relevant changes throughout the research process.

2.2.2. Calculation of international cooperation rate

The international cooperation rate is a useful indicator of demonstrating changes in cross-national research cooperation. Prior studies have adopted this indicator to assess the level of cooperation in various countries ( Choi et al., 2021 ; Lee and Haupt, 2021 ). This paper used the international cooperation rate during three periods, i.e., 2020–2021, 2015–2019, and 2010–2019, to investigate whether countries increased or decreased their international cooperation in the marine pollution before and during COVID-19 pandemic.

The international cooperation rate of a country is calculated as the percentage of international cooperation publications to total publications. The calculation formula is as follows:

where t represents time periods, and c refers to a specific country. I tc denotes the number of international cooperation publications by country c in time period t. T tc is the total number of publications published by country c during time period t. R tc is the international cooperation rate of country c in the time period t.

To calculate a country's international cooperation rate of a country, the country's number of international cooperation publications is needed. Specifically, the number of international collaborations is the total number of collaborations a country has with all other countries/regions in the data sets. It is calculated by subtracting a country's total number of publications with domestic only affiliations from its total number of publications. The formula is as follows:

B tc is the total number of publications with domestic only affiliations in the country c in the time period t. It is calculated by excluding all other countries in WOS results windows.

2.3. Data collection

The data in this article is derived from Clarivate Analytics' WOS Core Collection of databases. The WOS database is a high-quality digital database that covers a wide range of publications from various fields. The WOS database is a comprehensive citation database has the advantages of good transparency and orderliness ( Archambault et al., 2006 ; Mongeon and Paul-Hus, 2016 ). Furthermore, the WOS Core Collection has always maintained strict journal selection standards and evaluation processes, and its journal evaluation standards are recognized by the international academic community. The WOS database is recognized as one of the world's most authoritative scientific and technical literature indexing tools. Currently, a large number of publications have used WOS as a data source for bibliometric analysis, yielding reliable results ( Gao et al., 2020 ; Wang and Han, 2021 ; Zhang and Liang, 2020 ). As a result, data from the WOS Core Collection database were used to conduct the corresponding research. The search field used in this study is TS, which contains title, abstract, author keywords and keywords plus. The searched keywords include “marine pollution” and “ocean pollution”. The time spans are: 2010–2021, 2010–2019, 2015–2019, 2018–2019, and 2020–2021. Select articles with document types “Article” and “Review”. Data retrieval time is June 23, 2022. All data are exported with full records for analysis of results.

3. Results and analysis

3.1. trend of global marine pollution publications output.

Fig. 2 depicts the annual number and annual growth of publications in marine pollution research. The number of publications on marine pollution has increased from 2010 to 2021. Fig. 2 also shows an interesting trend that the rapid increase in the number of publications started in 2019. The number of publications in 2020 reached 2486, with an average increase of 573 publications annually and a 30.0 % growth rate. Since then, the number of publications were increasing, and has reached 3014 by 2021. This changing trend may have been influenced by the outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019. After the outbreak of COVID-19, the global attention to the epidemic has increased, and the marine environment has been affected to a certain extent. The corresponding marine pollution has attracted increased attention of many scholars, and the number of publications on marine pollution research has increased rapidly. The growth rate for the 2020–2021 period declined shortly, where the key reason accounts for this is many countries/regions around the world have implemented measures such as blockade to prevent the spread of the epidemic. These measures inevitably have a negative impact on scientific research output, resulting in a slowdown in the number of publications. On the other hand, because there is a time lag between receiving publications and including them, the number of publications in 2021 will be affected as well. Overall, the number of publications on marine pollution has increased during the COVID-19 era.

Annual number and annual growth of publications in marine pollution research (2010−2021).

3.2. Comparative analysis of global research landscape before and during COVID-19

3.2.1. comparative analysis of geographical distribution before and during covid-19.

Fig. 3 and Table 1 show the geographical distribution of the marine pollution research and the annual numbers of publications of the high-productivity countries. These data cover outputs marine pollution from over 150 high-productivity countries during 2010–2019, 2015–2019, and 2020–2021. Shades of map color (blue) in Fig. 3 differentiate the number of publications, specifically, darker colors indicate more publications.

Geographical distribution of marine pollution publications, (a) Annual number of publications (2010–2019); (b) Annual number of publications (2010–2015); (c) Annual number of publications (2020−2021).

Top 10 productive countries of the articles on marine pollution during 2020–2021, 2015–2019 and 2010–2019.

The figure shows that, both before and during the pandemic, the majority of countries are located in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, with Oceania also playing an important role. Moreover, the United States contributed the most publications during 2010–2019, with an average of 188.0 publications per year. Meanwhile, China had slightly fewer publications than the United States (183.2 publications). China has the most publications in the remaining two time periods, with 633.0 publications per year between 2020 and 2021, which is 1.715 times that of the United States. China is the most relevant country in marine pollution research, followed by the United States.

The top 10 most productive countries in the field of marine pollution research secures their places after the epidemic, while the total outputs have increased significantly during the COVID-19 era. Specifically, China (633.0 publications), the United States (369.0 publications), Italy (228.0 publications), the United Kingdom (200.5 publications), Spain (170.5 publications), India (165.5 publications), Australia (158.0 publications), Germany (154.5 publications), France (136.0 publications), and Brazil (131.5 publications) are the top 10 countries with the highest annual number of publications during 2020–2021. However, the inner ranking of the number of publications in the ten countries altered during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of publications in China, Italy, and India increased in the proportion of the world, and the annual outputs of the three countries has more than tripled compared to before the epidemic. Relevant publications in the remaining countries have all declined. China and India are the only two developing countries among the high-productivity countries. Developed countries have taken the lead in marine pollution research, and there is a productivity gap between developing and developed countries.

3.2.2. Comparative analysis of international cooperation rate before and during COVID-19

Then we explore how the top 10 contributors of impact of COVID-19 on marine pollution research (China, the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Australia, France, Germany, India and Brazil). The international cooperation rates of the top 10 countries with high productivity in the marine pollution research before and during the pandemic are analyzed.

Fig. 4 depicts the trends of the international cooperation rates for 10 countries during 2020–2021, 2015–2019 and 2010–2019. Except for China, the international cooperation rates of marine pollution studies during the COVID-19 in other countries are higher than before the pandemic. China's international cooperation rate (28.9 %) is lower than it was five (31.5 %) and ten (31.4 %) years prior to COVID-19. This could be attributed to China's timely regulation in response to the outbreak of COVID-19. As China's scientific research is largely unaffected, a large number of papers on marine pollution are published. The total publications in China have increased, while the rate of international cooperation has decreased. To sum up, COVID-19 has not hindered the cooperation among high countries, and even promoted relevant scientific cooperation.

The international cooperation rates during 2010–2019, 2015–2019 and 2020–2021.

Second, the United Kingdom has always had the highest rate of international cooperation both before and after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it is as high as 82.0 % during 2020–2021, followed by France (82.9 %). The rate of increase in international cooperation in Australia, India and France is higher than that of other countries. It is worth noting that China and India demonstrate a lower international cooperation rate than other countries. Although India's international cooperation rate has increased since the COVID-19 pandemic, it remains low. In general, developed countries have a higher international cooperation rate than developing countries.

3.2.3. Comparative analysis of cooperation networks before and during COVID-19

Fig. 5 shows the cooperation map of marine pollution research for the 10 high-productivity countries before and during COVID-19 during 2010–2019, 2015–2019, and 2020–2021. Different colors represent results in various nations on the map, and the width of the arc-circle contact area represents the annual number of publications for each country. The line connecting the two points on the circle represents the relationship between the two countries, and the width of the connecting line indicates the degree of cooperation. The thicker the line, the higher the degree of cooperation between the two countries. Thinner lines, on the other hand, represent a lower level of cooperation between countries.

The cooperation graph of 10 highly productive countries during 2010–2019, 2015–2019 and 2020–2021.

More countries have started to tighten international cooperation from 2020 to 2021, and the number of annual cooperation between countries has increased. Prior to the epidemic, China and the United States had the closest cooperation. The annually collaborative publications during 2010–19 and 2015–19 are 23.4 and 34.4, respectively. Following that are the links: between United Kingdom and the United States (15.1 and 20.6, respectively) and between Australia and the United States (13.2 publications, 18.6 publications). During the epidemic, the average annual collaborative publication between China and the United States reached 55.5. The United Kingdom and the United States are in second place (35.5 publications), followed by Germany and the United States (30.0 publications). Furthermore, China and the United States collaborate far more on marine pollution research than other countries in all periods. They have always been each other's closest collaborators and the primary contributors to research in this field.

Some countries' main collaborators have shifted. Prior to the pandemic, the United States was the largest partner country of the United Kingdom, India, Australia, Germany, France, and Brazil. During the pandemic, India's largest partner country shifted from the United States to China, Australia to the United Kingdom, and Brazil to Portugal. Furthermore, while India has increased its cooperation with China, the cooperation in marine pollution is still primarily concentrated among developed countries. To summarize, during the COVID-19 pandemic, some changes occurred in the regional cooperation model, and various countries actively pursued international cooperation.

3.3. Comparative analysis of research hotspots before and during COVID-19

In this section, a comparative analysis of the keyword clustering results of high-productivity countries in 2018–2019 and 2020–2021 is performed to determine whether COVID-19 has changed the main content of marine pollution research. Each ‘#’ in Fig. 6 represents 1 cluster.

Keyword clustering network graph during 2018–2019 (left) and 2020–2021 (right).

The cluster tags for 2018–2019 are #0 microplastic pollution, #1 ocean acidification, #2 regional transport, #3 plastic ingestion, #4 coral reef, #5 heavy metal, #6 oil spill, #7 nutrient enrichment, and #8 persistent organic pollutant. Cluster tags for 2020–2021 are #0 microplastic pollution, #1 source apportionment, #2 heavy metal, #3 polystyrene microplastics, #4 organochlorine pesticide, #5 microbial communities, #6 freshwater environment, and #7 plastic ingestion. These cluster labels represent the main research hotspots in the marine pollution field before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The largest cluster is about microplastic pollution in the marine pollution research when the clustering outputs of the two time periods are compared. Microplastic pollution has always been the most serious problem in marine pollution, and the problem of microplastic pollution in the marine environment has worsened during the pandemic, attracting widespread attention from scholars. Second, heavy metal and plastic ingestion are the key research topic before and during the epidemic, but the clustering order has shifted. Taken together, it can be concluded that COVID-19 has posed an impact on the main content of marine research. Although some research themes overlapped before and during the pandemic, the level of emphasis on these research themes has shifted. In order to have a deeper understanding of the research content of marine pollution, next, we further analyze the keyword clustering results during 2020–2021.

• (a) marine pollution & microplastic pollution

Microplastic pollution remains the focus of marine pollution researchers both before and during the epidemic. Clusters #0 microplastic pollution, #3 polystyrene microplastics, and #7 plastic ingestion are related to plastic pollution in the marine environment. Plastic pollution is a serious issue in coastal and marine ecosystems around the world ( Barboza and Gimenez, 2015 ). Microplastics, in particular, have received considerable attention as an emerging environmental pollutant. According to research, the majority of marine plastic wastes are microplastics ( Alimba and Faggio, 2019 ; Martin et al., 2018 ). Microplastics play the role of the carriers for heavy metals, organics, and other harmful substances, which combine to form complex pollutants that endanger marine biota ( Avio et al., 2015 ).

Following the outbreak of COVID 19, microplastic pollution has become increasingly serious. The widespread use of PPE during the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in increased levels of microplastic pollution as they are routinely discarded into oceans, rivers, streets, and other areas of the environment. According to estimates by Chowdhury, et al., approximately 150,000 to 390,000 tons of plastic debris may end up in the global ocean within a year ( Chowdhury et al., 2021 ). The overuse of plastic products to prevent the spread of infection adds to the plastic load in the environment ( Shams et al., 2021 ; Vaid et al., 2021 ; Wang et al., 2022a ). Furthermore, the widespread use and improper disposal of PPE may change the primary source of marine litter pollution. PPE could become a significant source of microplastics in the ocean and contribute to a surge of plastic pollution in the near future ( Ma et al., 2021 ; Morgana et al., 2021 ; Saliu et al., 2021 ; Shen et al., 2021 ; Wang et al., 2021c ).

As a result, scholars all over the world have conducted extensive research on microplastic pollution in the marine environment in order to address the significant challenges posed by microplastic pollution in the marine environment. Wang et al., 2021c , for example, reviewed the characteristics of microplastics in freshwater environments and discussed their sources and potential impacts ( Wang et al., 2021d ). Tang et al. investigated the composition and adsorption capacity of microplastics in aquatic environments and made some recommendations to promote the long-term use of microplastics ( Tang et al., 2021 ). Kumar et al. reviewed current research on the occurrence and distribution of microplastic pollution in river ecosystems ( Kumar et al., 2021 ). On the other hand, as people become more aware of the threat posed by microplastics, they pay more attention to it, leading to an increase in microplastics research.

• (b) marine pollution & source apportionment

In the field of marine pollution, source apportionment is considered a mainstream research front. Exploration of the source allocation of various pollutants in the ocean is critical for understanding the status of various pollutants in the marine environment and developing control policies. Stringent prevention and control measures were implemented during the COVID-19 period, resulting in changes in pollutant emissions. As a result, many relevant studies investigated the source apportionment of related pollutants ( Cecchi, 2021 ). Wang et al. used field surveys and microplastic morphological characteristics to infer the main sources of microplastics in each sea area ( Wang et al., 2021b ). Cui, et al. explored the distribution characteristics and potential sources of emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and personal care products ( Cui et al., 2019 ). Some studies extensively discussed is the source apportionment of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and heavy metals in sediments from many sea areas ( Han et al., 2019 ; Shi et al., 2022 ).

• (c) marine pollution & heavy metal

Heavy metals are the third hotspot in marine pollution research that academics are focusing on. Marine heavy metal pollution is a significant threat to the marine environment, which is attributed to certain heavy metals entering the ocean via various channels. Because of their toxicity, persistence, non-degradability, and bioaccumulation, heavy metals pose serious threats to human health, organisms, and natural ecosystems ( DeForest et al., 2007 ). Heavy metals enter marine environments through a variety of natural and anthropogenic sources. Heavy metals that enter seawater can interact with suspended particles via adsorption, complexation, and precipitation before being transferred to sediments and enriched ( Liu et al., 2019 ). Therefore, heavy metal pollution in sediments is an important environmental quality indicator, indicating pollution status and guiding ecological risk assessment ( Wang et al., 2018 ). Scholars have also evaluated and assessed heavy metal pollution in various sea areas based on this ( Jeong et al., 2021 ; Leung et al., 2021 ; Liu et al., 2021 ).

• (d) marine pollution & organochlorine pesticide (OCP)

Research on marine pollution and OCPs has also attracted increased attention of scholars. OCPs, a type of legacy persistent organic pollutant, have received a lot of attention due to their widespread distribution, resistance to degradation, and toxic effects ( Han and Currell, 2017 ). The contamination range of OCPs has reached the deepest part of the global ocean and has shown severe toxic effects in various biota in and around coastal areas ( Mennillo et al., 2020 ; Merhaby et al., 2020 ). Tsygankov et al. studied the bioaccumulation of OCPs in organisms in the marine environment ( Tsygankov et al., 2019 ). Basu et al. investigated bioaccumulation patterns by measuring OCPs in surface water, zooplankton, and some representative fish and shrimp ( Basu et al., 2021 ). Some studies revealed the concentration, spatial distribution, potential sources, and ecological risks of OCPs in the ocean ( Khozanah et al., 2022 ; Wang et al., 2022c ). Because of their hydrophobicity, OCPs are more easily absorbed by microplastics than other hydrophilic pollutants, which is a significant aspect of OCPs marine pollution.

• (e) marine pollution & microbial communities

Microbial communities are frequently explored in marine sediments, where microorganism biodegradation is critical to the restoration of the marine environment. Numerous studies have been conducted to investigate microbial communities. Many studies have concluded that microbial communities in marine sediment play an important role in the degradation of petroleum pollutants ( Catania et al., 2018 ; Wang et al., 2022b ), some researchers have assessed the ability of microbial communities to degrade hydrocarbons ( Gouveia et al., 2018 ). Plastic waste biodegradation is an important solution to many environmental issues. Microbial communities exposed to plastic can produce active catalytic enzymes and form dense biofilms on plastic surfaces. These enzymes can degrade synthetic polymers, allowing for the biodegradation of plastics ( Ganesh Kumar et al., 2020 ). The diversity, composition, and biodegradation potential of microbial communities, as well as the impact of various factors on microbial communities, have all been thoroughly investigated ( Coutinho et al., 2019 ; Lee et al., 2020 ; Seeley et al., 2020 ; Wang et al., 2021a ). In addition, studies have found that measures such as the global population lockdown imposed during COVID-19 have had an indirect impact on terrestrial and marine fauna. During this period, some microbial communities decreased due to factors such as reduced atmospheric nitrogen loads, lower wastewater fluxes and reduced fishing activity ( Sala et al., 2022 ).

• (f) marine pollution & freshwater environment

Growing studies on marine pollution involve the freshwater environment. Microplastic pollution of freshwater is well known to be a serious problem and they are ubiquitous in freshwater systems and can be discharged into coastal environments via rivers, posing a threat to the global marine ecosystem ( Xu et al., 2021b ). As a result, research on this subject has concentrated on plastic pollution in freshwater environments. Azevedo-Santos et al., for example, provided an overview of plastic pollution in freshwater ecosystems worldwide ( Azevedo-Santos et al., 2021 ). Strady et al. assessed baselines of microplastic concentrations in selected marine and freshwater environments ( Strady et al., 2021 ). Xu et al. reviewed microplastic pollution in urban freshwater watersheds in China and identified key knowledge and policy gaps that need to be filled to improve understanding of the environmental risks of microplastics ( Xu et al., 2021a ). Ding, et al. reviewed the source, fate and toxicity of microplastics in freshwater ecosystems ( Ding et al., 2021 ). The COVID-19 pandemic and its economic and social impacts have brought several benefits and risks to biodiversity. Research by Cooke, et al. elucidated the interplay between social disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and pre-existing threats to freshwater ecosystems ( Cooke et al., 2021 ).

4. Conclusions and implications

This study systematically reviewed marine pollution publications in the WOS database, and conducted an in-depth analysis of publication output, global research landscape and research hotspots before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The primary goal of this study is to explore whether the COVID-19 pandemic affects marine pollution research. The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:

• (i) The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant impacts on the trend of marine pollution research publication output. Total number of publications on marine pollution research is constantly growing. Moreover, the number of publications has risen sharply during the COVID-19 era.
• (ii) The outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has altered the global research landscape in the field of marine pollution. The number of publications of marine pollution research in various countries increased significantly during the epidemic, and the ranking of high-productivity countries changed. Other high-productivity countries, with the exception of China, have higher international cooperation rates than those before the pandemic.

The regional cooperation model of marine pollution research was discovered to alter. COVID-19 has not hampered international cooperation, by contrast, there has been increased international cooperation during the epidemic. Furthermore, there is still a research capability gap between developing and developed countries in marine pollution research both before and after the COVID-19's outbreak. The countries with the greatest influence in marine pollution research are primarily developed nations. In general, the rate of international cooperation in developed countries is higher than in developing countries. Cooperation across developed countries plays a significant role in the total outputs.

• (iii) The COVID-19 pandemic has affected marine pollution research hotspots in many aspects. The research focus and degree of attention are found to alter after mining the keyword clustering results. Microplastic pollution is the primary focus of marine pollution research prior to and during the pandemic. As the problem of microplastic pollution in the marine environment worsens, academics conducted that increased and deepened research on various aspects of microplastic pollution during the pandemic.

We make recommendations on the problems existing in the research status of COVID-19 and marine pollution. Continued efforts are needed to make the deeper understanding of the marine pollution research associated with the COVID-19 more accessible. Second, cross-national cooperation should be strengthened as the current research indicates that developed countries are the dominant force in global research. Developing countries may benefit more from international cooperation in the marine environment research. To maximize the scientific outputs in the marine pollution-related research, developing countries should build more international cooperation and strengthen cooperation with developed countries in the future. The close bond will establish a stable global scientific research cooperation force. Third, microplastic pollution remains the biggest challenge in today's marine environment, and the negative impact of COVID-19 on marine plastic pollution has not been eliminated. Therefore, the microplastic pollution research needs continuous focus in the long term.

This paper provides a macro-system analysis of the global COVID-19 pandemic and marine pollution research, which aids in determining the relationship between COVID-19 and marine pollution in future research. However, there are some limitations to this study that needs further exploration in the future. First, a portion of the research in the article focuses on countries high-productivity countries, with no detailed analysis of international cooperation with other countries/regions. Second, search queries may be insufficient to completely capture all publications related to the marine pollution. Selecting articles from a single database may result in the omission of some publications, which may have an impact on the final results of our analysis. Further research might extend the research scope and investigate the developing research status concerning marine pollution in more regions with the updated database.

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Qiang Wang: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Data curation, Writing – original draft, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Min Zhang: Methodology, Software, Data curation, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Rongrong Li: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Xue-ting Jiang: Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the editor and these anonymous reviewers for their helpful and constructive comments that greatly contributed to improving the final version of the manuscript. This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72104246, 71874203).

Data availability

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