Author: A. Paradinović
After a Labor day, on May 2 we headed to Lastovo to do marine litter monitoring. As part of this project activity, three field researches have been done so far, and this was the last, the fourth. According to the protocol, we did marine litter monitoring on the beaches of Sito, Kremena and Saplun, and sea transects in the southeastern and western waters around the Lastovo Islands. On the beaches in the given area, waste was collected, sorted by categories, and the number, origin and mass of each type of waste was recorded. On sea transects, along precisely defined routes, the sea surface is observed from the ship and the quantity and type of floating waste in the sea was recorded.
What we noticed was that there were a lot of tiny pieces of plastic and microplastics on Kremena beach, while there was a larger amount of medical waste on Saplun beach. At Sito beach we were greeted by an unpleasant surprise and a huge amount of plastic waste.
5 days of field work passed quickly and we returned to Split, and now the processing of the collected data follows. Although this is our last monitoring within the project, we hope that they will be implemented in the future, and that the amount of recorded waste will be reduced. Based on the data collected, a detailed analysis will be made by which effective mitigation measures will be determined and proposed.
