Nearly 700 marine species are known to interact with marine debris.
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Experts rate fishing gear, balloons, plastic bags and bottle caps as most harmful to wildlife.
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Even deep sea litter is ubiquitous, with up to items/ha on seamounts.
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4500 nets likely killed more than 2.5 M marine invertebrates; 800,000 fish and 20,000 birds before removal.
Abstract
There is an exponentially increasing amount of human-associated litter in our oceans. This marine litter results in a wide range of potential impacts on the environment. These range from the introduction of adsorbed polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into food webs to the entanglement and subsequent mortality of threatened seabirds, fish, turtles and mammals in anthropogenic litter and derelict fishing gear. While there has been a major effort afoot to publicize these issues, there remains a paucity of data and scientific research to underpin solutions to the problems. To address knowledge gaps and to identify potential solutions, we assembled thirteen experts from around the world who are leaders in the field. Speakers present current research in three major areas: 1) integrated ecological and oceanographic models to that measure risk to wildlife and predict impact, 2) literature reviews and field studies that measure both the scope and intensity of the threat across species, and 3) analysis of wildlife indicators as regulatory standards for plastic concentration in the environment.