PLASTIMED and BIODIVPLASTIMER

The aim of this project is to improve knowledge of marine litter and its fate on the surface of the Mediterranean Sea by building an interdisciplinary database on plastics and to construct a model of the circulation of plastic debris. We will identify the main plastic transport pathways, determine potential areas of plastic accumulation and areas of congruence between the abundance of plastics of different size classes and the most important functional group of zooplankton. The ingestion of plastics during feeding behavior by passive ingestion or prey resemblance is now recognized. It is therefore important to assess the possible link between plastics and planktonic communities and to estimate whether the amounts of plastics relative to zooplankton are a good candidate as an indicator of the state of pollution in the sea. These results will be used as a guide to identify priority areas for the implementation of mitigation strategies leading to the reduction of pollution in the basin