A global inventory of small floating plastic debris

Microplastic debris floating at the ocean surface can harm marine life. Understanding the severity of this harm requires knowledge of plastic abundance and distributions. Dozens of expeditions measuring microplastics have been carried out since the 1970s, but they have primarily focused on theNorth Atlantic and North Pacific accumulation zones, with much sparser coverage elsewhere. Here, we use the largest dataset of microplastic measurements assembled to date to assess the confidence we can have in global estimates of microplastic abundance and mass.Weuse a rigorous statisticalframework to standardize a global dataset of plastic marine debris measured using surface-trawling plankton nets and coupled this with…

• CS
  Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
• DF
  Directorate for Biological Sciences
• AR
  Ames Research Center

  Awards: NNX08AR49G, NNX13AK35G
• AR
  Australian Research Council