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The stations were surveyed for marine litter in April, June, October 2008 and in January 2009. Each survey consisted of 20 m long transects (Araújo et al., 2006) divided into different numbers of 2 m wide stripes parallel to the waterline (Fig. 2). The width of the beach from the waterline to the backshore varied from 11.2 to 40 m. The entire width of the beach was sampled, dividing it LY2109761 in as many stripes as necessary, i.e. the beach that was 40 m wide had a total of 20 sampling stripes. Within each sampling stripe all debris items >2 cm were collected, categorized and counted. Waste materials were taken to the nearest disposal site after photos of litter items/transect were taken in each station.
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Fig. 2.
Schematic overview of beach survey design.
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Density of items (number of items m−2) was calculated as ‘the total number of items on transect’/(width of the glycolipids transect[m]*20[m]). Some studies express the litter density as the number of items per 1 m or 100 m of beach front without taking into consideration the width of the beach. In order to facilitate the comparison with other studies, density (number of items. m−1 of beach front) was also calculated as ‘the total number of items on transect’/20[m].