Ocean plastic contamination is a huge and growing environmental crises. Monitoring is key to understand how the contamination level is changing through time and if measures implemented to reduce the plastic have indeed an impact. Yet, we still have a limited understanding of simple questions: where and what accumulates on the shore and for how long it stays there. We are gathering strategic intelligence by monitoring marine plastic contamination on sandy and rocky shore beaches. To date, food wrappers, cotton ear plugs, fishing nets, bottles, straws and carrier bags are what we commonly record along Moroccan and Portuguese coast. Along these shore, in one square meter of beach, up to 1254 plastic particles can be counted.

Read more about our research.
Nadja Vanessa Rosa Velez (2017) Prevalence and impacts of pollution by plastic debris along shores of south Portugal and Morocco. MSc thesis in Marine Biology thesis University of Algarve, Portugal.​