Anthropogenic Litter Input Through Rivers In The Black Sea

The sources and quantities of marine litter and plastic pollution in the Black Sea are yet unknown. It is important to identify the main pathways in order to enable mitigation strategies to reduce the input of plastic waste to the marine environment. In this sense, rivers in this region are expected to play an important role in transporting mismanaged waste to the sea, but data on this matter is still very limited. This study presents a first compilation of riverine floating macro litter data collected in rivers flowing into the Black Sea. Visual observations provided indicative information on the most frequent litter items and rates of riverine litter fluxes in ten rivers from Ukraine, Russia, Georgia and Turkey. Top items presented an 83.7% of plastics, including cover / packaging, bottles, pieces and bags as main contributors. Riverine litter fluxes were variable, showing median values between 4 and 75 items/hour in the different rivers, and maximum values up to 700 items/hour in the individual monitoring sessions. The establishment of future monitoring programmes require the implementation of harmonized approaches and consistent frequency in the data collection to improve the representativeness of results, enabling appropriate comparable assessments of riverine litter inputs in the Black Sea.