ICES WKMAL Report 2010 - Report of the Joint MEDPOL/Black Sea/JRC/ICES Workshop on Marine Litter (WKMAL)

The Joint MEDPOL/Blacksea/JRC/ICES Workshop on Marine Litter (WKMAL) was established as a follow-up to previous activities on marine litter in relation to the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, where Marine Litter is one of the descriptors. The workshop was chaired by Francois Galgani (France) and supported by Henna Piha (JRC). The workshop considered the following points: ¿ Monitoring and experimental results ¿ The status of marine litter ¿ Identification of existing data on marine litter ¿ On-going data collection on marine litter ¿ Data needs for future assessment of marine litter ¿ Standards for recording marine litter ¿ Research needs ¿ Future ICES/MEDPOL/BSC activities on marine litter ¿ General discussion on good environmental status From the discussion the following recommendations for future work emerged: ¿ Definition of scientific and technical basis for monitoring ¿ Harmonisation of classification of marine litter in relation to monitoring ¿ Identification of knowledge gaps and priority areas for research ¿ Definition of common and comparable monitoring approaches ¿ Development of scientific approaches to assess GES on a re-gional/European scale (sources and inputs as important indicators) ¿ Assessment of socio-economic harm (clean-up costs, litter related naviga-tion accidents, costs to fisheries) ¿ ICES/MEDPOL/BSC involvement in research on marine litter, to prioritise and support scientifically the development of research programs. ¿ The need for a technical workshop to disseminate and inter-calibrate tech-niques amongst Member states for future monitoring. ¿ ICES should consider new activities on marine litter on the basis of identi-fied scientific needs by the EC Technical Subgroup on Marine Litter or by regional institutions.JRC.DDG.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource