Marine litter is a recognized environmental problem, which has been subject to many research studies, monitoring and international legislations with the goal to improve the state of the marine ecosystem. The aim of my thesis was to study if debris on the Swedish west coast has changed during the past five years (2011-2015), and to make an overview of how the marine ecosystem and the organisms in general are affected by marine litter. I hypothesized that the amount of coastal litter would have decreased as a response to the taken measures. I investigated debris on three beaches on the Swedish west coast during February 2015; Grönevik, Gröderhamn and Edshultshall. At each beach seven randomly selected one meter squares were searched for litter. Estimates for the entire beaches were compared to the investigations performed by the OSPAR (Oslo and Paris conventions) organization during 2011-2014. In difference to my expectations none of the observed litter objects showed any decrease during the study period. Statistical analyzes instead indicated that two litter objects originating from the sea have increased, i.e. fish nets and plastic ropes, while the other seven objects observed did not show any significant up- or downward trends over time. My literature survey showed that litter is a large problem for the marine environment and that many animals suffer severely and often dies when plastic litter is consumed and mistaken as food items. The cost for maintaining the marine environment in condition is estimated to be high.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:umu-102275 |
| Date | January 2015 |
| Creators | Pettersson, Henrik |
| Publisher | Umeå universitet, Institutionen för ekologi, miljö och geovetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
Page generated in 0.0026 seconds