Sources of marine debris for Seychelles and other remote islands in the western Indian Ocean

2023/01/14 by Noam Vogt-Vincent, April Burt, David M. Kaplan +3 · 1 voice · 3 citations
Environmental Science · Engineering · #Microplastics and Plastic Pollution #Marine and Offshore Engineering Studies

paper · doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114497

openalex publication_date 2023/01/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

Vast quantities of debris are beaching at remote islands in the western Indian Ocean. We carry out marine dispersal simulations incorporating currents, waves, winds, beaching, and sinking, for both terrestrial and marine sources of debris, to predict where this debris comes from. Our results show that most terrestrial debris beaching at these remote western Indian Ocean islands drifts from Indonesia, India, and Sri Lanka. Debris associated with fisheries and shipping also poses a major risk. Debris accumulation at Seychelles is likely seasonal, peaking during February-April. This pattern is driven by monsoonal winds and may be amplified during positive Indian Ocean Dipole and El-Niño events. Our results underline the vulnerability of small island states to marine plastic pollution, and are a crucial step towards improved management of the issue. The trajectories used in this study are available for download, and our analyses can be rerun under different parameter choices.

Citations

• GENERAL CIRCULATION EXPERIMENTS WITH THE PRIMITIVE EQUATIONS
• SciPy 1.0: fundamental algorithms for scientific computing in Python
• The ERA5 global reanalysis
• Array programming with NumPy
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• More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean

Cited by

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Discussions

• Here's a link to our study where we conclude that ships (from SEA) are the only realistic source of most plastic bottles arriving at Aldabra: doi.org/10.1016/j.ma... Here's a couple of studies with s [bsky, 3 points, 0 comments]

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