Action 55: Hotspots of floating litter
Action Title: Develop sub regional or regional maps of hotspots of floating litter, based on mapping of circulation of floating masses of marine litter, and identification of hotspots of accumulation on coastal areas and the role of prevailing currents and winds.
Lead Party(ies): Portugal with participation from Spain, France, the United Kingdom and Ireland
What is the issue?
This action aims to investigate the behaviour of floating litter and understand where it is likely that accumulations or hotspots of litter may occur, either being washed up on the beaches or as floating masses at sea.
What has OSPAR Done?
This action has been addressed through the Clean Atlantic Project, a consortium of entities from Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Spain, and Portugal (and OSPAR as associated partner) and funded by INTERREG ATLANTIC and ran from 2017 - 2021. A model has been developed to show hypothetical scenarios of floating litter throughout the OSPAR region at different scales.
Final outputs and published reports
OSPAR is on the Advisory Board of the interreg funded CleanAtlantic project which will contribute to the development of this action.
The CleanAtlantic project kicked off in 2017 and will run until 2021.