Beach litter in the Arctic

Updated:11/27/2023

Litter on the beaches in some areas of the Arctic is extensive, and found far from where people live. Where does beach litter come from?

Polar researcher Geir Gabrielsen on the quay in Svalbard — Polar researcher Geir Gabrielsen in Svalbard.

"I was seeing more and more plastic on the beaches we visited, particularly Kapp Mitra and Forlandet, up towards Danes Island. It occurred to me that the increasing amount of plastic along the coast could also correlate to an increased amount of plastic in fulmars. In 2013, we found 15 or 16 plastic particles in every bird we examined. I was shocked and realised that it was time to wake up - the ecological consequences of marine litter are serious.”

Geir Gabrielsen, Norwegian Polar Institute

What do we know about the plastic in the Arctic?

Since 2013, knowledge and awareness that plastic is a widespread global environmental problem has escalated. However, the problem has not decreased as knowledge has increased. The Arctic is a geographical area with a low population density but high levels of activity, which is likely increasing due to maritime industries such as fishing and shipping.

As the global trend shows that land-based litter is the greatest source of plastic in the sea, an area such as the Arctic, where large geographical areas are uninhabited and the population density is low, should have low levels of litter. Unfortunately, there is a lot of litter on the beaches in certain areas of the Arctic, a long way from where anybody lives.

In 2019, the Arctic Council’s working group Protection of the Arctic Marine Environment (PAME) published the Desktop Study on Marine Litter including Microplastics in the Arctic, which was the first and most comprehensive study on the status and effects of marine litter in the Arctic at the time. Some of the key findings were as follows:

There is limited data on the occurrence and sources of macroplastic litter in the Arctic.
Based on available analyses, 50-100 per cent of the macroplastics along the coast and on the seabed originates from fishing-related activities.
OSPAR data from 17 locations in the Arctic indicates that there are seasonal variations in the occurrence of litter and the average number of items found per metre of beach is higher during the spring than in the summer. 94% of registered items were plastic.

Plastic and ocean currents to the north

According to the extensive research article Plastic pollution in the Arctic (Bergmann et al.), plastic can make its way to the Arctic from afar via ocean currents. The plastic floating on the surface is carried to the Arctic from Europe via the ocean currents moving north through the northeastern Atlantic, while a more modest amount can make its way through the Barents Sea to the west. We know less about how plastic moves within the Arctic, as there is insufficient data available. However, there is plenty to indicate that there are more microplastics on the Atlantic side of the Arctic and towards the east than there is on the Pacific side to the west.

In other words, ocean currents mean that plastic is able to travel across large areas. Macroplastics can accumulate over a relatively short period of time if circumstances allow. The fact that plastic recognises no national borders is also well illustrated by the PAME Plastic in a Bottle project, in which it is possible to monitor capsules that have been released into the sea from various locations in order to see how they move around the North Atlantic.

Much of the plastic found on Arctic beaches originates from regional activities

Plastic can make its way to the Arctic from areas far away, but there is also plenty to indicate that the plastic found on beaches originates from regional activities. In the study Potential sources of marine plastic from survey beaches in the Arctic and Northeast Atlantic (Strand et al.), data on weather, waves and ocean currents were used to develop a model that can predict where the litter in the Arctic originates from. The estimates were compared to the beach litter findings recorded on OSPAR beaches in Norway and on Svalbard. The comparison shows that it is probable that much of the litter cleared from Arctic OSPAR beaches originates from regional fishing activities. The authors behind the research article Plastic pollution in the Arctic also note that local sources of litter largely include maritime activities such as oil and gas extraction, aquaculture and shipping in the form of tourist and fishing activities, but that some litter also originates from land.

The map shows the places where littering has been cleared or recorded in the research articles and reports used as sources in the article. Map: Marfo/Peter Flermoen

Examples from different parts of the Arctic:

Alaska

Alaskan coastal areas largely consist of uninhabited areas without road access. This means that it is difficult to map and carry out clean-up operations, as this requires the use of boats or aircraft. The report A Review of Marine Debris Surveys, Accumulations and Cleanup Projects in Alaska through 2014 by the Alaska Marine Stewardship Foundation summarises clean-up activities along the Alaskan coast. The different coastal regions are affected by litter to varying degrees. The most commonly found types of litter in most regions were trawl nets, seine nets, longlines and rope. In the regions facing the Bering Strait, both fishing-related litter and litter not originating from shipping activity were found.

In another study, five national parks in Alaska were cleared of marine litter. There was far more marine litter in the national parks in the Gulf of Alaska than in the parks on the western and north-western coast of Alaska. Areas in the Gulf of Alaska are affected by coastal and ocean currents and also experience high levels of activity from fishing, tourism, oil tankers and shipping, all of which contribute to litter. It was mostly ropes and seine nets that were found. Hard plastic was found at all of the 28 beaches examined during the study.

The Bering Strait - Marine Debris Event Report by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) discusses a likely acute discharge of marine litter in the Bering Strait in Alaska during the summer of 2020. In late July, the coastal communities in the region noticed unusually high concentrations of litter along the beaches. The initial observation took place in the area near Saint Lawrence Island, followed by subsequent reports of observations further north, from the Bering Strait and into the Chukchi Sea between Siberia and Alaska.The waste that drifted ashore was primarily of international origin, with the majority on which the writing could be deciphered appearing to originate from Russia.

The waste was quickly cleared and documented by passionate locals. Although the cleared waste varied between the different areas, some of the findings were unusual for the region. Most of the items that were found consisted of plastic and aluminium drinking bottles, food containers, plastic bags and other consumer-related waste. Orange and black rubber boots were also an unusual finding and accounted for no less than 8.7% of the waste recorded. It seemed as though most of it had ended up in the sea recently as the plastic had not started to degrade yet. The production date was visible on many of the products, several of which had been manufactured in 2019 or 2020.

NOAA considers it likely that the litter was due to a localised discharge resulting from an adverse event onboard a vessel or deliberate dumping, since the waste was of recent origin, differed from the items usually found in the area and the volumes of waste were all observed over a brief period of time.

Greenland

Svalbard

The Governor of Svalbard has organised beach clean-ups since 2000. The annual clean-up operations on Svalbard report that the volume primarily consists of plastic originating from the fishing fleet. According to the Environmental Monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen (MOSJ), seine net remnants and trawl bags, plastic and metal net floats, fish crates and plastic containers were the items most commonly found. MOSJ performs environmental monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen, including monitoring of beach litter. Each year, MOSJ records the amount of waste that drifts ashore in Bruce Bay. The data shows that litter drifts ashore in Bruce Bay every year and that there are years in which large items drift ashore, having a major impact on the total weight. Bruce Bay is also an OSPAR beach. The most recent data from 2023 shows that the dominant types of litter are longlines and fishing lines, as well as pieces of plastic. The same type of litter also dominates on Svalbard's other OSPAR beach, Luftskipodden, for which the latest records date back to 2020.

The time between each recording of littering on Svalbard’s OSPAR beaches is too long for the data to provide any clear idea of trends. However, there is no doubt that maritime industries, such as fishing, account for a significant proportion of the waste recorded each year.

In 2022 and 2023, the budding researcher programme at Svalbard Folk High School carried out clean-up operations at several beaches on Svalbard. The purpose of the clean-up operations was to examine the main differences between the litter found in Isfjorden and the litter found on the northern coast of Svalbard. A total of eight sites in Isfjorden were cleared in 2022 and a total of nine were cleared along the northern coast in 2023. In 2023, three were along the outer coast, while seven were along the inner coast.

The litter was subsequently sorted and recorded in collaboration with Salt, Marfo and Keep Norway Beautiful. The litter was recorded using Salt’s deep-dive analysis form and the Rydde registration form. The analyses conducted by the Folk High School so far indicate that there is a greater volume of litter in the northern parts of Svalbard than previously assumed. The litter in the north consists to a greater extent of fishing and industry-related waste than has been registered at the sites along Isfjorden, but the differences between Isfjorden and the northern coast were smaller than assumed. These results are only preliminary as the analysis of the collected data is still ongoing as of November 2023.

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