During the ice melting, its motion in the spring (Idzelytė et al. ( 2017), we believe that lagoons and estuaries as transitional zone could be an essential provider of information about river basin-related litter leakage. Supporting Source-to-Sea Framework for Marine Litter Prevention by Granit et al. The catchment area of those rivers is covered by agricultural fields, which substantially increases the pollution load (Schernewski et al. More than 85 million people live in the Baltic Sea catchment area. The total Baltic Sea catchment area is four times larger than the surface area of the Baltic Sea, and it comprises nearly 1.8 million km 2 (Räike et al. However, these approaches focused on the open coastal beaches only, not considering the shores of the inner-coastal waters such as lagoons and estuaries. To gather more knowledge about meso- (5–25 mm) and large micro-litter (2–5 mm), different sieving (i.e., Rake method) and bare-eye methods were used at Baltic beaches (Haseler et al. Beach surveys in Germany and Lithuania following OSPAR Guideline (OSPAR 2010) took place (Schernewski et al. Long-term surveys such as the MARLIN Project “Baltic Marine Litter” (MARLIN 2011) of the marine litter of Estonian, Latvian, Swedish, and Finnish coasts have been conducted to meet these requirements. This bare-eye method primarily focuses on stretches of sand or gravel beaches at least 1 km long, with surveys of 100 meters, and targets macro-litter (>25 mm). A joined and harmonized monitoring strategy (JRC, 2011) was adapted from the OSPAR Guideline (OSPAR, 2010) and further developed, ensuring that data is comparable among monitoring surveys. On that basis and in addition to the “Regional Action Plan for Marine Litter in the Baltic Sea” (HELCOM 2015), there are legal obligations to record and reduce the marine litter pollution of the various marine habitats in the Baltic Sea (LUNG-MV 2015). MSFD is aiming to reach Good Environmental Status (GES) across the European Union (EU) by 2020 through the use of 11 descriptors (MSDF 2008/56/EC) with Descriptor 10 aiming for: “Properties and quantities of marine litter do not cause harm to the coastal and marine environment” (MSFD 2008/56/EC). The Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) was adopted to protect the marine environment in 2008. 2014), while the pollution on coastlines such as salt marshes, estuaries, mangroves, and beaches (UNEP 2016) is one of the most obvious signs of it (JRC 2011). Plastic occurs in the deep sea (Van Cauwenberghe et al. The number of species negatively affected by plastic has increased to more than 500 among all wildlife groups (Kühn et al. 2013), making it one of the significant environmental issues of our planet (Fallati et al. The majority of marine litter consists of plastic (Reisser et al. 2014), causing damage to wildlife (UNEP 2015), leading to economic losses and safety risks to people’s life (HELCOM 2015). Marine litter is found all around the world in all marine habitats (Pham et al. An evident strength of the methodology established is the capability to determine litter of all sizes, low-cost and time-efficiency, implementable for volunteer-based monitoring provides comparable results to the most commonly used methods for investigating litter pollution on coastal beaches. Experts allocated these items to the “Land based industry and trade” source, which indicates that lagoons and bays through the connection of the major rivers could be a potential sink of land-based litter. The “Construction material”, “Plastic pieces 2–5 mm”, and “Plastic pieces 5–25 mm” were among this study’s top ten most common litter items. This study shows that the litter densities between lagoons and bays differ and depend on the river output intensity and the retention capacity. This method has been applied to 23 beaches from three inner-coastal waters of the Baltic Sea. The method proposed in this study is based on two 40 m 2 rectangular polygons placed on the tidal accumulation zone for macro-litter enumeration and two 1 m 2 squares for micro- and meso-litter. This study aimed to develop a methodology suitable for large micro (2–5 mm), meso (5–25 mm), and macro-litter (>25 mm) monitoring at sandy inner-coastal waters that would provide comparable results to the intensively used OSPAR 100 m method. However, no official methodology exists to investigate their relatively short, rich in organic matter beaches, and the knowledge of pollution of lagoons is scarce worldwide. Coastal lagoons and estuaries are hot spots to accumulate river basin-related plastic leakage.
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