Anthropogenic litter contamination of the oceans is a global problem of growing concern and currently receives strongly increasing attention by policy makers, public authorities, media and the general public. Unlike many other pollutants, marine litter on beaches and its deleterious effects on marine mammals, birds and turtles have attracted much attention as they can be directly observed by stakeholders

Bergmann, Melanie

Gutow, Lars

Tekman, Mine Banu

Walter, Andreas

Electronic Publication Information Center

Tackling Marine Litter—LITTERBASEMelanie Bergmann, Mine B. Tekman, Andreas Walterand Lars Gutow1 BackgroundAnthropogenic litter contamination of the oceans is a global problem of growingconcern and currently receives strongly increasing attention by policy makers,public authorities, media and the general public. Unlike many other pollutants,marine litter on beaches and its deleterious effects on marine mammals, birds andturtles have attracted much attention as they can be directly observed by stake-holders. ‘Blue environments’ provide a sense of connectedness with nature tohumans, which is, however, signiﬁcantly compromised by the presence ofanthropogenic litter (Wyles et al. 2015). This explains its importance in publicperception, and it also shows that the issue lends itself well to showcasing both theimportance of our oceans to humankind and at the same time the global extent ofanthropogenic impacts on marine ecosystems.Marine litter consists primarily of plastics, which does not come as a surprisegiven the durability of the material and that 8,300 million tons of plastics have beenproduced to date (Geyer et al. 2017). The recent discovery of the great oceanicgarbage patches and of microplastic, a degradation product ( 5 mm) of largeritems, has spurred new interest in this ﬁeld of research, which is currently taking aM. Bergmann (&)  M. B. TekmanHGF-MPG Group for Deep-Sea Ecology and Technology,Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research,Am Handelshafen 12, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germanye-mail: Melanie.Bergmann@awi.deA. WalterComputer and Data Centre, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and MarineResearch, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570 Bremerhaven, GermanyL. GutowFunctional Ecology, Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar and MarineResearch, Am Handelshafen 12, 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany© The Author(s) 2018G. Krause (ed.), Building Bridges at the Science-Stakeholder Interface, SpringerBriefsin Earth System Sciences, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75919-7_1385large leap forward. Great efforts are being made to assess the impacts of this form ofpollution on marine biota. This has disclosed an unexpected complexity of aseemingly simple environmental problem (Kühn et al. 2015; Lusher 2015). Thenumber of records on the abundance and distribution of litter in more and moreaquatic ecosystems and all oceanic regions is growing rapidly in the scientiﬁcliterature, highlighting its ubiquity (Galgani et al. 2015). Between the late 1960sand 2016, scientiﬁc research on marine litter has yielded some 250 publications.But although this ﬁgure rose to 200 papers just between 2010 and 2013 (Ryan2015), studies currently lack standardisation of methodology, which hamperscomparison, qualiﬁcation and quantiﬁcation of the impacts on a global level(Galgani et al. 2015). The temporal and spatial coverage of studies mostly focuseson local areas or speciﬁc time periods, which does not improve our understandingof possible sources and transport mechanisms at a global scale. Accordingly, wecurrently only know where 1% of the total amount of plastic assumed to enter theoceans from land ends up (van Sebille et al. 2015). Considering the vastness ofmarine environments and the complex interactions between different ocean biomes,we urgently need baselines to extrapolate data and thus allow global assessments.In a survey among 3,876 stakeholders, including representatives of industries,management, education, environmental organisations, and the general public from16 European countries, most respondents were concerned about marine litter (87%)and conceived it as a severe threat to marine environments (80%) (Hartley et al.2015). However, survey respondents beleived most litter to be near urban coastalareas and underestimated the proportion of marine litter items composed of plasticby 30%. In another, smaller, survey (n = 68), the majority of respondents’ mis-takenly believed that microplastics were primarily found on beaches and at the seasurface (S. Pahl cited in GESAMP (2015)). These examples highlight that, despitethe topic’s societal relevance, the rapidly growing scientiﬁc knowledge is currentlypoorly fed back to and used by society. Effective environmental policy and man-agement, however, require sound scientiﬁc advice as well as effective processes thatenable information uptake and feedback within and from societal stakeholders.Here, we developed a tool with two main goals: (1) compile existing scientiﬁcknowledge to enable meta-analyses, which allow us to deduce global patterns ofmarine litter abundance, composition, distribution and ecological effects; (2) in-crease public understanding of marine litter by channelling scientiﬁc knowledgeinto accessible and understandable information products.2 Scope and MotivationScientists from ﬁve different research groups at AWI currently focus on differentfacets of this environmental problem, i.e. on the impact of litter and microplasticson marine life, the distribution of litter and microplastics in different biomes andgeographic regions and on methodological harmonisation. At a national level, theAWI is therefore currently conceived at the forefront of marine litter research such86 M. Bergmann et al.that AWI scientists are frequently consulted by the media and public authorities foradvice and information. For example, the institute’s annual media resonanceanalysis showed that the press releases pertaining to this topic resulted in 686citations in the press, reaching more than 37 million people in 2014 alone, a ﬁgurethat does not even include enquiries independent of press releases. Queries ofscholars or other interested parties refer primarily to basic but overarching issuessuch as current ﬁgures on global quantities, composition and distribution of marinelitter, the number and kinds of biota affected, or the effects on marine life andhuman health. However, the rapid progress in marine litter research scattered allover the Globe has made information on this topic increasingly intangible andinaccessible to interested stakeholders who cannot extract the requested informa-tion. To overcome this, Bergmann et al. (2015) channelled the current state ofresearch in the text book ‘Marine Anthropogenic Litter’ and then became aware thatthe compiled knowledge became outdated as the book was written because of therapidly growing number of new research publications. To provide easily accessible,understandable and continuously updated statistics and information products onmarine litter and microplastic, the online portal ‘LITTERBASE’ was devised.Stakeholders using this portal include public authorities, policy makers, NGOs,media, scholars, education sector, ﬁshing industry, the general public and plasticmanufacturing industry. For the purpose of this text, a reference to litter hereafterrefers to both microplastic and larger-sized items.3 Materials and MethodsA scientiﬁc database was designed to allow standardisation and analysis of marinelitter data. The need for the instant display of the latest data along with older entriesand many-to-many relationships of study locations and ﬁndings precluded the useof simple data management and storage tools. Therefore, the database was imple-mented on PostgreSQL 9.5. The publications were grouped according to their focuson either litter distribution, or interaction between litter and biota, or on both. Theposition of each study location was stored separately so that as many details aspossible could be displayed in the front-end maps. Information such as litter type,size, litter quantity unit, aquatic system, biome, interaction type and effect weredeﬁned as metadata categories and extracted. Taxonomic information of the speciesaffected by litter was also included. Where possible, litter quantities were stan-dardised during data entry. Interactive web-based data management forms weredevised to facilitate a user-friendly entry of multidimensional information toLITTERBASE. The data management and front-end applications were imple-mented with open-source Java Exercise Evaluation Framework (JEEE) technolo-gies (Spring framework, Hibernate, Tyhmeleaf) and deployed to Apache Tomcat8.0.33 on the institute’s server. Google chart API was used to produce graphs in thefront-end to display the output of data analyses. Two geo-referenced maps (litterdistribution and biota interaction) were implemented with ArcGIS 10.4.1 as part ofTackling Marine Litter—LITTERBASE 87the front-end application. The AWI GIS Viewer 0.3.3 extension was used to publishArcGIS projects as Web Map Services. Data were assembled as feature classes viadatabase views to enable an instantaneous display of new entries and updates inmaps. The most common metadata categories were used as selection criteria in thefront-end application to allow stakeholders to ﬁlter and display scientiﬁc data in anunderstandable and user-friendly manner.4 ResultsLITTERBASE comprises two main components and its extensions:(1) Data entry (back end). Most peer-reviewed publications on the distribution ofaquatic litter and its impacts were selected from previous review articles and newcontent alerts of scientiﬁc journals. Information extracted from 1,593 publica-tions providing records of the distribution and/or interactions from more than7000 locations were entered into the scientiﬁc database (status February 2018).Bibliometric data of all publications were entered, as were metadata pertainingto litter type (e.g. plastic, glass, metal, ﬁshing gear), litter size (i.e. nano, micro,macro), litter quantity unit (e.g. items km−2, items km−1, items m3), aquaticsystem (e.g. marine, freshwater, estuary), biome (e.g. beach, sea surface, watercolumn, benthic) and total litter quantity. Litter quantities were standardised tothe same units to achieve comparability. However, the use of many differentsampling and analysis methods in different studies precluded a categorisation ofall litter densities into one uniform set of units. Therefore, all analysis methodsand units were kept in the database for further scientiﬁc analysis, whileonly three unit systems (items km−1, items km−2 and items m−3), comprising42% of all records, were provided as selection and display criteria in geo-referenced maps.Data on biological interactions with litter were also extracted: location of ﬁeldrecords, number of species affected, percentage of individuals affected, type ofinteraction incurred (e.g. entanglement, ingestion, coverage, rafting), effects onbiota (e.g. injury, mortality, growth, behaviour), litter type, litter size, aquaticsystem and biome.(2) Online data portal LITTERBASE (frontend). Stakeholders can view thedata entered in continuously updated information products. The distribution ofglobal litter quantities and of interactions between litter and marine life is, forexample, displayed in interactive maps (Figs. 1 and 2). Using tick boxes,stakeholders can restrict the display to records from certain aquatic systems,biomes or litter sizes. Pie charts show the contribution of different materials tothe litter records. Differences in the quantities of litter from different areas arereﬂected in the size of the mapped pie charts. Upon click on a pie chart, furtherinformation as well as bibliographic data pops up in a text box.88 M. Bergmann et al.In addition, information on the number and kinds of marine species affected bydifferent types of litter can be viewed in pie charts. Data from laboratoryexperiments are also included in these information products but not shown inmaps to preclude bias due to the position of laboratories.Achievements of LITTERBASE during the ﬁrst quarter after the launchDuring the ﬁrst year after the launch, the portal was visited about 77,284 times in29,517 sessions Fig. 2. Maximum sessions per day were between 984 and 3,474 inthe ﬁrst month, probably as a result of a broadcast in the local TV news (Buten andFig. 1 Screenshots from LITTERBASE: (Top) Quantity and composition of litter andmicroplastic recorded from different locations worldwide. (Bottom) Field records of interactionsbetween marine biota and litter from different locations worldwide (status 27/09/2017). Insert textbox with information on record opens when clicking on pointsTackling Marine Litter—LITTERBASE 89Binnen). Mention of LITTERBASE in the News section of SCIENCE and inGerman newspapers instigated also increased page visits as did a communicationabout LITTERBASE in the high-ranking scientiﬁc journal NATURE (Bergmannet al. 2017).Information from LITTERBASE was used in headlines of various IndianNewspapers and homepages stating “Mumbai’s sea-water most polluted globally” or“Vembanad Lake amongmost polluted in the world”. This is important as it highlightsthat the portal is being used by individual local stakeholders themselves to extract theinformation that they need. Additionally, both requests to use and offers to sharefurther litter data were directed to the LITTERBASE team. Thesewere put forward byscientists, regulators, scholars and teachers as well as citizens. LITTERBASEinformation graphics were also used in a geography text book for high school.Currently, the homepage is visited on average by some 2,132 users per month.Twenty-one percent of the page visits are currently from German sites, followed byThe Netherlands (14%), US (12%), France (9%) and others. Returning visitorsaccount for 24%, new use for 76%. A Google Analytics survey returned 39,259linkages (status February 2018), many of which were from German sites but alsofrom US American, Asian, Russian, Italian, French, Dutch, Chilean and sites fromother nations.5 Reﬂection and Lessons LearnedThe implementation of an online portal to aggregate and present scientiﬁc resultsgoes beyond the usual activities of natural scientists and requires substantial supportand close collaboration with contributors from other disciplines, primarily com-puting specialists. The development and implementation of LITTERBASE greatlybeneﬁted from the employment of an IT specialist with a strong environmentalbackground and extensive experience in the topic of marine litter. Human resourceswith a broad expertise from multiple disciplines were essential for a successfulimplementation of the portal. However, such proﬁles clearly contrast the conven-tional development of specializations in academia. If online portals are to become anintegral part of the knowledge transfer strategy of an institute, a prominent institu-tionalisation of this branch in the infrastructure and curriculum of the computing andother departments will be imperative to guarantee successful future developmentsand the sustainable long-term maintenance of the implemented technology.Fig. 2 Page visits per day (22/04-26/09/2017) from Google Analytics tool90 M. Bergmann et al.6 OutlookLITTERBASE is only one player in a concert of various online portals on marinelitter, set up by other institutions. However, depending on the scientists and insti-tutes involved, the various portals will have different foci and will hence providedifferent views on the same issue. A diverse supply of information from differentsources will allow for a broad understanding of the marine litter problem in variousstakeholder groups. Whether these diverse knowledge transfer activities actuallycontribute to the development of sustainable solutions to this eminent environ-mental problem is still difﬁcult to assess and will have to be subject to dedicatedsocial-science as well larger-scale interdisciplinary projects.LITTERBASE will be subject to constant further development. Possible futureextensions include geo-referenced litter observations made by citizens. Citizenscience campaigns have the potential to substantially expand the spatial extent ofinvestigations. The identiﬁcation and quantiﬁcation of anthropogenic litter in theenvironment and its multiple effects on the marine wildlife can easily be assessed bypersons without speciﬁc scientiﬁc background, such as tourists, rangers, divers,ﬁshers or members of the general public. Once added to the database, the results ofcitizen science campaigns can be viewed in combination with scientiﬁc data in theonline portal thereby potentially enhancing connectedness of non-scientists with thespeciﬁc research ﬁeld.Acknowledgements The authors thank the AWI IT and GIS departments for their support indeveloping and launching LITTERBASE. T. Busch, F. van Heeckeren, I. Kittel, C. Peter, B.Staufenbiel and N. Steiner extracted and fed information from publications into LITTERBASE.This publication is Eprint 43257of the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Centre for Polar andMarine Research.ReferencesBergmann, M., Gutow, L., Klages, M. (2015). Marine anthropogenic litter. Berlin: Springer.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16510-3.Bergmann, M., Tekman, M. B., Gutow, L. (2017). Marine litter: Sea change for plastic pollution.Nature, 544, p. 297. https://doi.org/10.1038/544297a.Galgani, F., Hanke, G., Maes, T. (2015). Global distribution, composition and abundance ofmarine litter. In: M. Bergmann, L. Gutow, & M. Klages (Eds.), Marine anthropogenic litter(pp. 29–56). Berlin: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16510-3_2.GESAMP (2015). Sources, fate and effects of microplastics in the marine environment: a globalassessment. IMO/FAO/UNESCO-IOC/UNIDO/WMO/IAEA/UN/UNEP/UNDP Joint Groupof Experts on the Scientiﬁc Aspects of Marine Environmental Protection. ISSN: 1020-4873.Geyer, R., Jambeck, J. R., Law, K. L. (2017). Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made.Science Advances, 3. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.1700782.Tackling Marine Litter—LITTERBASE 91

Tackling Marine Litter - LITTERBASE

Melanie Bergmann

Mine B. Tekman

Andreas Walter

Lars Gutow

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Tackling Marine Litter—LITTERBASE

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Tackling Marine Litter - LITTERBASE

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