Our oceanographic survey MEDLIT, is being conducted under the Project LAMARCA. Over the next days, we will continue exploring plastic and microplastic distribution—from surface to the full water column—across different water masses and transport processes, from meso to submesoscales. The team, with scientists from AZTI, IMEDEA – Institut Mediterrani d’estudis Avançats, ICMAN, Instituto de Ciencias Marinas de Andalucía, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and the Irish Marine Institute and the support of IFISC-Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Physics and Complex Systems (CSIC-UIB) and CNR-ISMAR Institute of Marine Sciences, is working hard, uniting cutting‑edge instrumentation and cross‑disciplinary expertise to decode the journey of plastics in our marine systems.
🔍 Our objectives:
• Map plastic & microplastic concentrations in surface zones and deep waters
• Understand how transport processes shape plastic distributions at sea
• Integrate physical, biological, and plastic data for a holistic understanding also of the impacts of this pollution
🛠️ Our multidisciplinary approach includes:
• CTD rosette for high‑resolution physical and BGC profiles and water samples
• Maxi & Neuston-nets for targeted plastic sampling at different vertical levels
• Surface accumulation monitoring via onboard video system
• 28 drifting buoys, for tracking plastic transport pathways from a Lagrangian perspective
• Remote sensing data, including HF radar surface currents, provided by SOCIB.
MEDLIT is one of the main milestones of the Project LAMARCA: LAgrangian transport of MARrine litter and microplastics from modeling, analysis and observations in CoAstal waters.
