Scientists from France, Portugal and Spain worked together to produce OSPAR’s first ever assessment of marine litter ingested by sea turtles.
The assessment is based on necropsies of 182 loggerhead turtles obtained from 1988 to 2019 in the Southern OSPAR area. The results showed that there is a high incidence of litter ingestion by sea turtles in the Bay of Biscay, Azores and Macaronesia.
This new common indicator provides the baseline for further monitoring and evaluation of trends and compliments OSPAR’s 2020 overview report of anthropogenic impacts on loggerhead and leatherback turtles. Further actions will be taken by the OSPAR countries to tackle marine litter under the new Regional Action Plan adopted in 2022 and by addressing impacts such as entanglement and ingestion of litter by sea turtles.
