Marine Debris in Sydney Harbour

Marine debris is now ubiquitous in estuary and coastal ecosystems. Debris can include small items such as plastic bags and household rubbish up to fishing debris and abandoned vehicles or vessels. Plastic debris is common and has come under scrutiny because of well-documented impacts to marine organisms from entanglement and ingestion. This project aims to investigate the spatial distribution of macro and microplastics in Sydney Harbour. Novel techniques will be investigated for the extraction and quantification of microplastics in sediments and the fate of macroplastics from the water column to the sediments will be investigated.