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Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems
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Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems

A special issue of Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (ISSN 2077-1312). This special issue belongs to the section "Marine Ecology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 October 2023) | Viewed by 11845

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Alexandra Ershova

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Laboratory for Plastic Pollution Research (PlasticLab), Russian State Hydrometeorological University, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Interests: marine litter and microplastics; baltic sea; Russian arctic seas; beach litter monitoring; citizen science
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Dmitry Domnin

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Shirshov Institute of Oceanology, Russian Academy of Sciences, 36, Nahimovskiy Prospekt, Moscow, Russia
Interests: processing, analysis and visualization of GIS data; modeling of hydrological processes; marine litter; beach-cast and beach wrack; assessment of nutrient load on water systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Along many beaches in the world, the beach swash zone is often occupied by a diverse typology of refuse materials, deposited by wind, waves, currents, and tidal forces. These materials are known as beach cast, and they comprise a combination of diverse types of refuse items generated from specific sources. Studies show that most of the anthropogenic litter floating in the ocean and washed ashore, even to remote archipelagoes of the Arctic, originates from mainland, and includes household wastes, various SUP items, and fishery-related products (fish boxes, etc.). Approximately half of the litter floating in the open ocean is ghost fishing gear, while numerous studies have shown the presence of microfibers in the water columns of all marine ecosystems. Recent international efforts on the marine litter issue include the Regional Action Plans, which have now been approved for areas of the ocean such as the Arctic, the Baltic Sea, and the Caribbean Sea. The RAPs focus on specific plastic and litter sources and pathways, and support the monitoring aspect of the growing issue of litter and microplastics. However, much more action is required in order to implement the suggested strategies.

This Special Issue invites papers that discuss sustainable solutions for ocean use in all economic sectors in relation to plastic pollution, including novel monitoring techniques, litter cleanup innovations, and guidelines to prevent the input of plastic litter into the ocean, both from land- and sea-based activities. This Special Issue will also welcome studies and regional initiatives including coastal population and citizen science activities, involving local and indigenous people who partake in marine litter monitoring and, thereby, contribute to the sustainable management of coastal ecosystems. High-quality papers, directly related to the various aspects mentioned above, are encouraged for publication. Novel techniques for the study are encouraged.

The themes covered include, but are not restricted to, the following:

  • Sustainable solutions for marine litter management;
  • Monitoring programs and guidelines for marine litter and microplastics;
  • Marine litter in beach-cast zone;
  • Prevention of litter input from land- and sea-based activities;
  • Innovations and new approaches to litter management, cleanup technologies and approaches;
  • Citizen science monitoring campaigns and initiatives.

Dr. Alexandra Ershova
Dr. Dmitry Domnin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • marine litter
  • microplastics
  • beach cast
  • sustainable solutions
  • marine litter management
  • monitoring programs and guidelines
  • land- and sea-based sources of marine litter
  • innovations and new technologies
  • cleanups
  • citizen science

Published Papers (7 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 8734 KiB  
Article
Real-Time Instance Segmentation for Detection of Underwater Litter as a Plastic Source
by Brendan Chongzhi Corrigan, Zhi Yung Tay and Dimitrios Konovessis
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(8), 1532; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11081532 - 31 Jul 2023
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1718
Abstract
Thousands of tonnes of litter enter the ocean every day, posing a significant threat to marine life and ecosystems. While floating and beach litter are often in the spotlight, about 70% of marine litter eventually sinks to the seafloor, making underwater litter the [...] Read more.
Thousands of tonnes of litter enter the ocean every day, posing a significant threat to marine life and ecosystems. While floating and beach litter are often in the spotlight, about 70% of marine litter eventually sinks to the seafloor, making underwater litter the largest accumulation of marine litter that often goes undetected. Plastic debris makes up the majority of ocean litter and is a known source of microplastics in the ocean. This paper focuses on the detection of ocean plastic using neural network models. Two neural network models will be trained, i.e., YOLACT and the Mask R-CNN, for the instance segmentation of underwater litter in images. The models are trained on the TrashCAN dataset, using pre-trained model weights trained using COCO. The trained neural network could achieve a mean average precision (mAP) of 0.377 and 0.365 for the Mask R-CNN and YOLACT, respectively. The lightweight nature of YOLACT allows it to detect images at up to six times the speed of the Mask R-CNN, while only making a comparatively smaller trade-off in terms of performance. This allows for two separate applications: YOLACT for the collection of litter using autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and the Mask R-CNN for surveying litter distribution. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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12 pages, 1113 KiB  
Article
Biomarker Effects of Diesel Fuel Hydrocarbons Absorbed to PE-Plastic Debris on Mussel Mytilus trossulus
by Nadezda Vladimirovna Dovzhenko, Victor Pavlovich Chelomin, Andrey Alexandrovich Mazur, Valentina Vladimirovna Slobodskova, Aleksandra Anatolyevna Istomina and Sergey Petrovich Kukla
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(7), 1446; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11071446 - 19 Jul 2023
Viewed by 752
Abstract
Pollution of global oceans by plastic litter is one of the most important ecological problems of our time. At the same time, the active sorption of highly toxic chemicals dissolved in water by plastic also poses a threat to the marine environment and [...] Read more.
Pollution of global oceans by plastic litter is one of the most important ecological problems of our time. At the same time, the active sorption of highly toxic chemicals dissolved in water by plastic also poses a threat to the marine environment and its inhabitants. This article presents the results of experimental studies on the properties of polyethylene (PE) as a vector of petroleum hydrocarbons (PH) and its influence on the biochemical parameters of tissues in the Pacific mussel Mytilus trossulus. It was shown that the presence of unused polyethylene fragments (PE) and PE fragments with water-soluble fractions of diesel fuel (PE-WSF-DF) in seawater caused the development of oxidative stress in M. trossulus. We observed severe changes in hemolymph lysosome membrane stability (LMS) and a significant increase in DNA fragmentation in the gills and digestive glands of mollusks. The presence of PE-WSF-DF fragments in water increased the activity of antioxidant enzymes: catalase (CAT) and glutathione-S-transferase (GST). In the experiment, direct contact between plastic fragments and mussels was excluded, meaning the filter-feeding mollusks ingested the desorbed PH and leaching components existing in PE from the water. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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12 pages, 2913 KiB  
Article
Floating Riverine Litter Flux to the White Sea: Seasonal Changes in Abundance and Composition
by Maria Mikusheva, Maria Pogojeva, Ekaterina Kotova, Alexsander Kozhevnikov, Eleonora Danilova, Anfisa Berezina and Evgeniy Yakushev
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(2), 293; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11020293 - 31 Jan 2023
Viewed by 1920
Abstract
Arctic rivers bring litter from their basins to the sea, but accurate data for the Arctic do not exist yet. This study presents the first assessment of floating macro litter input (>2.5 cm) from the Northern Dvina and Onega rivers to the White [...] Read more.
Arctic rivers bring litter from their basins to the sea, but accurate data for the Arctic do not exist yet. This study presents the first assessment of floating macro litter input (>2.5 cm) from the Northern Dvina and Onega rivers to the White Sea. The observations were performed based on the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) methodology and using the mobile application of the Joint Research Centre (Ispra, Italy). The results of observations from May 2021 to November 2021 show that 77% of floating objects were of natural origin (mainly leaves, wood and bird feathers). Of the particles of anthropogenic origin, 59.6% were represented by various types of plastics, 27.7% were processed wood, 8.5% paper/cardboard, 2.7% metal, 1.1% were rubber and <1% textiles. The average monthly input of anthropogenic macro litter by the Northern Dvina varies from 250 to 1700 items/hour, and by Onega from 520 to 2350 items/hour. The level of pollution of the studied rivers was found to be higher than in some Europeans rivers but lower than in China. The mass discharge of macroplastics in the Northern Dvina River was compared with the estimates of the discharge of meso- and microplastics; that allowed us to show that the discharge of macroplastics in mass units is much higher than of micro- and mesoplastics. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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10 pages, 1967 KiB  
Article
Differences in the Fate of Surface and Subsurface Microplastics: A Case Study in the Central Atlantic
by Igor Zhdanov, Svetlana Pakhomova, Anfisa Berezina, Ksenia Silvestrova, Natalia Stepanova and Evgeniy Yakushev
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(1), 210; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11010210 - 13 Jan 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1636
Abstract
Plastic is recognized as a threat to marine ecosystems, and estimating the level of plastic and microplastics (MPs) pollution of the World Ocean is, nowadays, the goal of many studies. However, the use of different methods for the sampling and analysis of MPs [...] Read more.
Plastic is recognized as a threat to marine ecosystems, and estimating the level of plastic and microplastics (MPs) pollution of the World Ocean is, nowadays, the goal of many studies. However, the use of different methods for the sampling and analysis of MPs leads to the problem of comparing the results obtained. Studies on surface MPs pollution of the surface sea water are based on the application of the manta or neuston nets that collect water from the upper 10–20 cm layer (the “surface” MPs) or submersible pumping systems that collect water from the water layer 3 to 5 m below the sea surface (the “subsurface” MPs). These two techniques allow the collection of particles of different size fractions, i.e., >300 µm for the surface MPs and >100 µm for the subsurface MP. However, it is shown that microplastics found in the surface and subsurface layers differ not only in the size of the items found, but also in morphology, types of polymers, abundance, weight concentration and their spatial distribution. Different hydrodynamic processes affect the fate of the plastic found exactly at the sea surface and several meters deeper. The aim of this work was to study the distribution of surface and subsurface MPs and to reveal an influence of oceanographic conditions on their spatial distribution, using as an example the open ocean waters of the Central Atlantic. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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14 pages, 3862 KiB  
Article
Change over Time in the Mechanical Properties of Geosynthetics Used in Coastal Protection in the South-Eastern Baltic
by Boris Chubarenko, Dmitry Domnin, Franz-Georg Simon, Philipp Scholz, Vladimir Leitsin, Aleksander Tovpinets, Konstantin Karmanov and Elena Esiukova
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(1), 113; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11010113 - 05 Jan 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1512
Abstract
The most massive design on the Baltic shore used geosynthetic materials, the landslide protection construction in Svetlogorsk (1300 m long, 90,000 m2 area, South-Eastern Baltic, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russian Federation) comprises the geotextile and the erosion control geomat coating the open-air cliff slopes. [...] Read more.
The most massive design on the Baltic shore used geosynthetic materials, the landslide protection construction in Svetlogorsk (1300 m long, 90,000 m2 area, South-Eastern Baltic, Kaliningrad Oblast, Russian Federation) comprises the geotextile and the erosion control geomat coating the open-air cliff slopes. Due to changes in elastic properties during long-term use in the open air, as well as due to its huge size, this structure can become a non-negligible source of microplastic pollution in the Baltic Sea. Weather conditions affected the functioning of the structure, so it was assessed that geosynthetic materials used in this outdoor (open-air) operation in coastal protection structures degraded over time. Samples taken at points with different ambient conditions (groundwater outlet; arid places; exposure to the direct sun; grass cover; under landslide) were tested on crystallinity and strain at break. Tests showed a 39–85% loss of elasticity of the polymer filaments after 3 years of use under natural conditions. Specimens exposed to sunlight are less elastic and more prone to fail, but not as much as samples taken from shaded areas in the grass and under the landslide, which were the most brittle. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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12 pages, 4155 KiB  
Article
Riverine Litter Flux to the Northeastern Part of the Black Sea
by Maria Pogojeva, Evgeniya Korshenko and Alexander Osadchiev
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(1), 105; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11010105 - 04 Jan 2023
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1537
Abstract
Rivers are among the main sources of marine litter, especially for semi-isolated sea areas with high populations and intense economic activity. The semi-isolated Black Sea located in the Eastern Europe is an example of such an area, whose watershed basin is under high [...] Read more.
Rivers are among the main sources of marine litter, especially for semi-isolated sea areas with high populations and intense economic activity. The semi-isolated Black Sea located in the Eastern Europe is an example of such an area, whose watershed basin is under high anthropogenic pressure. In this study, we report the results of the first long-term monitoring program of floating litter at several rivers inflowing to the northeastern part of the Black Sea. We describe the main characteristics of registered marine litter, including the distribution of its type and size. Based on the obtained results, we reveal the relation between river discharge rate and the litter flux for the considered rivers. Using this relation extended to all rivers of the study area, we assess the total annual flux of riverine litter to the northeastern part of the Black Sea. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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11 pages, 2429 KiB  
Article
Impact of Coastal Sediments of the Northern Dvina River on Microplastics Inputs to the White and Barents Seas
by Artyom V. Belesov, Timofey V. Rezviy, Sergey A. Pokryshkin, Dmitry E. Lakhmanov, Dmitry G. Chukhchin and Alexandr Yu. Kozhevnikov
J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(10), 1485; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10101485 - 13 Oct 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 2116
Abstract
The Northern Dvina River flowing into the White Sea may be one of the main sources of microplastic (MP) pollution in the Arctic region. The coastal sediments of the Northern Dvina River act as an intermediate link in the transport of microplastics to [...] Read more.
The Northern Dvina River flowing into the White Sea may be one of the main sources of microplastic (MP) pollution in the Arctic region. The coastal sediments of the Northern Dvina River act as an intermediate link in the transport of microplastics to the areas of the White and Barents Seas. The µFT-IR and Py-GC/MS methods were used to determine that up to 200 particles or 120 mg of MP per kg could accumulate in the coastal sediments of the Northern Dvina River. Coastal sediments tend to accumulate ABS and PS plastic particles with a particle size of around 200 µm. The accumulated microplastics (218 particles or 117 mg per kg of sediment per year) are carried away by strong currents, especially during spring flooding, resulting in pollution of the Barents and White Seas. The obtained data play an important role in assessing the MP pollution of the Arctic region, especially the White and Barents Seas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Litter and Sustainability of Ocean Ecosystems)
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