Working Group 42: Indicators of Marine Plastic Pollution
Motivation and Goals:
Marine debris is increasingly recognized as a threat to biota in the ocean, and especially North Pacific and its marginal seas are reported as ‘hot spots’ for its abundance. However, organismal and non-organismal indicators, which are consistently available across the North Pacific region, for plastic pollution status and trend and ecological impacts are not established.
Terms of Reference
  1. To review pollution (e.g. abundance, distribution, composition, and potential impacts) across different size categories in the North Pacific and its marginal seas;
  2. To identify multiple organismal and non-organismal indicators of plastic pollution and its environmental impacts including associated chemicals in the North Pacific and its marginal seas;
  3. To recommend guidelines for monitoring environmental indicators and a target improvement goal for the established indicators;
  4. To convene a topic session and/or workshop on environmental indicators and impacts of plastic pollution and coordinate a special issue in an international peer-reviewed journal;
  5. Contribute to FUTURE by publishing a final report summarizing results of the Working Group deliberations.
Products
Annual Meetings

Reports

2021, 2020, 2019

Session and Workshop Summaries

PICES-2021:
S8, Using environmental indicators to assess baselines, targets, and risk of plastic pollution in the North Pacific

PICES-2019:
S7, Environmental indicators of plastic pollution in the North Pacific

PICES Scientific Report
TBA
Journal Papers
Savoca, M.S., et al.
Towards a North Pacific Ocean long-term monitoring program for plastic pollution: A review and recommendations for plastic ingestion bioindicators.
Environmental Pollution, Vol. 310, 1 Oct. 2022, 119861

Uhrin, A.V., Hong, S., Burgess, H.K., Lim, S. and Dettloff, K.
Towards a North Pacific long-term monitoring program for ocean plastic pollution: A systematic review and recommendations for shorelines.
Environmental Pollution, Vol. 310, 1 Oct. 2022, 119862

Shim, W.J., Kim, S.K., Lee, J., Eo, S., Kim, J.S. and Sun, C.
Toward a long-term monitoring program for seawater plastic pollution in the north Pacific Ocean: Review and global comparison.
Environmental Pollution, Vol. 311, 15 Oct. 2022, 119911
Related Materials
PICES-2018 SG-MMP Report
Study Group on Marine Microplastics

PICES Sci. Rep. No. 56, 2020
Report of Working Group 31 on Emerging Topics in Marine Pollution

PICES Sci. Rep. No. 46, 2014
Report of the Study Group on Marine Pollutants
WG-42 PICES Members as of December 2024