The Arctic Council has made marine litter (or marine debris) a focus of the 2019-2021 Icelandic chairmanship efforts on marine litter, with three of the six Arctic Council working groups having active marine litter focused expert groups and projects. The purpose of the overall AMAP project is to provide a framework for gathering data on marine litter in the Arctic to inform local policies, community awareness, and regional action planning. MDP’s attendance at the workshop is part of ongoing engagement and support of these efforts.

The purpose of the workshop was to further define and identify paths forward across the monitoring guideline project. MDP staff presented on other international work and communications and participated in overall and break-out sessions on monitoring approaches, with specific focus on shoreline monitoring (e.g., MDMAP) and modeling (integrating experience from Japanese Tsunami marine debris). MDP will remain engaged in AMAP discussions through monthly conference calls and the planned meeting at the Symposium on Plastics in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Region, to be hosted by Iceland in April 2020.

For more information, contact Peter.Murphy@noaa.gov.

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