Environmental Impacts of Human Activities

11 April 2016

EIHA met in springtime Berlin close to the famous Brandenburg Gate. The main focus of the meeting was the development and assessment of indicators on marine litter andunderwater noise, as well as a thematic assessment of dredged material. These included the first assessments of OSPAR beach litter monitoring data and seabed litter data from fisheries trawl surveys. These will be integrated into OSPAR's Intermediate Assessment in 2017.

The other main topic on a full and varied agenda was the implementation of the OSPAR Regional Action Plan on marine litter. This included consideration of a draft assessment of sources and pathways of microplastics in the marine environment and a background document on improvement of the implementation of international standards in relation to port reception facilities.