Introducing an innovative approach to detecting Marine Litter in coastal waters around the world. The EO Tracking of Marine Debris in the Mediterranean Sea project utilises high resolution earth observation data to detect floating debris in the marine environment. This European based consortium will lead the development of this cutting edge technology. Using a debris detection processor developed by the consortium to analyse Sentinel-2 images, they can detect rafts of litter and vegetation floating on the sea surface.
Marine debris has been an issue for many years, but as the use of plastic continues to increase, marine debris is beginning to affect the marine environment in extremely detrimental ways. Understanding where and how debris travels once it has entered the marine environment is crucial knowledge to mitigate the environmental and negative socioeconomic effects of widespread marine debris.
Approximately 5-10% of all of the world’s plastic can be found in the Mediterranean Sea, which is roughly 5-30 thousand tonnes of plastic (Suaria et al, 2016) and as ESAs Sentinel-2 satellite provides full coverage of the basin, it makes the Mediterranean Sea a prime location to develop and train a processor that can detect debris from space.