I AM visiting my hometown of The Hague on the west coast of the Netherlands and I have decided to take my family on a fun trip to the seaside. When I say “fun trip”, I of course mean an excursion to collect samples for my latest scientific research endeavour: the .
This project involves sampling sediment along a 30-metre stretch of beach from within five quadrants, each 1 square metre in size, and filtering it to extract any microplastic or mesoplastic fragments – pieces of plastic 1 to 5 millimetres or 5 to 25mm across, respectively. Any such fragments are then sorted by type and colour, photographed and submitted to the survey as observations via an .
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Data gathered by volunteers contributes to a , including the density of the pollution and the proportions of various types of plastic found in different regions. The Big Microplastic Survey began in 2018 and is run by charity and the in the UK, but you can participate anywhere in the world.
On the beach in The Hague, unfazed by the icy North Sea breeze, my family and I choose our sampling area and use a maps app on one of our phones to record our location. Later, we will use this to share the coordinates of our position so that our findings can be added to the Big Microplastic Survey’s global results map.
If you decide to conduct your own survey, it is recommended that you do so during an outgoing tide, as this is the safest time to survey and the best time for locating strandlines – regions where previous high tides have deposited seaweed and other ocean debris. The ideal strandline to sample along is the highest one, also known as the wrack line. More on how to conduct your own survey are available via the project’s website.
Regardless of whether you discover zero fragments or hundreds of them (my family and I found just one microplastic fragment in our survey), your observations contribute valuable information. Hundreds of people across 55 countries have participated in the survey since it launched and their findings are helping to uncover sources of microplastic pollution around the world.
Results so far show that although there is regional variation in the types of microplastic fragments collected by volunteers, the majority identified globally are nurdles – small pellets used in plastic production.
David Jones, CEO of Just One Ocean, hopes the data gathered through the survey will help to inform government policies aimed at tackling microplastic pollution, which threatens the environment and potentially also human health.
Layal Liverpool is a science journalist based in Berlin. She believes everyone can be a scientist, including you. @layallivs
What you need
To register for the Big Microplastic Survey at .
Access to the seaside and a 30m stretch of beach.
Rope or thick string at least 4m long for mapping out sampling areas.
A 10cm quadrant cut out of cardboard to guide sampling.
A spoon for digging up sediment.
Two buckets and a 1mm mesh sieve for filtering microplastic fragments.
A takeaway food tray or other container for storing collected material.
For other projects visit newscientist.com/maker.
