Anthropogenic marine debris along the Spanish Mediterranean coastline: What is affecting its abundance?

Abstract

[eng] Marine litter is a problematic affecting every ecosystem of the planet and trying to solve it is certainly becoming the focus of many studies worldwide. Beach surveys are an effective way of measuring the amount of Anthropogenic Marine Debris (AMD) deposited on beaches and the factors influencing its abundance and deposition patterns. Also, beach surveys suppose an effective method for raising awareness between the local communities and a powerful educational tool for the youngest citizen scientists. The Mediterranean Sea, being a semi-enclosed basin with densely populated coasts, is not evading this global problematic. In this study, a dataset of 62 beaches from the Spanish Mediterranean coast cleaned from February 2019 to November 2019 has been analyzed, together with data from scientific surveys performed on beaches of the Cabrera Archipelago National Maritime-Terrestrial Park, a Marine Protected Area in the Balearic Islands, Western Mediterranean. This study aims to understand the variables, anthropogenic and environmental affecting the deposition of AMD in these areas, also describing in depth the composition, sources and patterns of AMD along the Spanish Mediterranean coastline. The prevailing type of debris in most of the beaches surveyed was plastic, being the light packaging the dominant fraction of the total debris found. The source of the majority of litter was domestic and sampling dates and location were found to have the greatest effect on the abundance of AMD, being Fall the season with higher abundance of debris on the beaches sampled.