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Polarquest 2018 Expedition: Plastic Debris at 82°07’ North

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Mare Plasticum - The Plastic Sea

Abstract

Many human perturbations have the potential of destabilizing the present functioning of the environment and marine plastic is one of them. Plastic debris was found everywhere on Earth, including polar waters. The Polarquest 2018 expedition around Svalbard (July and August 2018) used sustainable sail vessel Nanuq as a platform to sample microplastic in seawater and macro debris stranded on beaches.

Eight stations were sampled trawling a Manta net in the top 50 cm of surface water and four stations filtering surface seawater from buckets. A record-breaking Manta net sample was carried out on the edge of the North Pole ice shelf at a latitude of 82°07’ N. Flying drones made visual observations of debris on beaches of Alpiniøya island (North-East Svalbard) with ground truth by human visual sightings.

Citizen science cruises in the Arctic are likely to increase in the next years due to ice-free ocean parallel to growing interest in plastic in the ocean. The number of clean-ups and microplastic surveys are likely to increase as well and Polarquest 2018 was the first expedition of this kind to reach and sample beyond 82° N.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Safiria Buono, Manta net operator and crew member of the Polarquest 2018 expedition; Peter Gallinelli (Sailworks), skipper and designer of sailboat Nanuq and expedition leader and Frederic Gillet (University of Savoie), Nanuq’s scientific coordinator, for their invaluable participation and supervision of the microplastic sampling campaign on board Nanuq during the Polarquest 2018 expedition.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. ISMAR Institute of Marine Science, CNR National Research Council, La Spezia, Italy

    Stefano Aliani & Valeria Catapano

  2. Università Europea Roma, Geographic Research and Application Laboratory (GREAL), Rome, Italy

    Gianluca Casagrande

  3. CERN—European Organization for Nuclear Research, Geneva, Switzerland

    Paola Catapano

Authors
  1. Stefano Aliani
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  2. Gianluca Casagrande
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  3. Paola Catapano
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  4. Valeria Catapano
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Stefano Aliani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ARSCIENCIA and CERN Honorary Staff Member, Wien, Austria

    Marilena Streit-Bianchi

  2. ARSCIENCIA, Sada, A Coruña, Spain

    Margarita Cimadevila

  3. ARSCIENCIA, Werndorf, Steiermark, Austria

    Wolfgang Trettnak

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Aliani, S., Casagrande, G., Catapano, P., Catapano, V. (2020). Polarquest 2018 Expedition: Plastic Debris at 82°07’ North. In: Streit-Bianchi, M., Cimadevila, M., Trettnak, W. (eds) Mare Plasticum - The Plastic Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-38945-1_5

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