Brief description
Data on the type, provenance, quantity (density), and rate of accumulation of beach-washed plastic debris were recorded on Henderson Island, a remote, uninhabited island in the South Pacific during 29 May – 15 August 2015. Henderson Island is rarely visited by humans, thus debris on the islands' beaches may act as a proxy for the adjacent South Pacific Ocean. The island was found to contain the highest density of debris anywhere in the world, up to 671.6 items/m2 (mean ± SD: 239.4 ± 347.3 items/m2 on the surface of the beaches. Approximately 68% of debris (up to 4,496.9 pieces/m2) was buried <10 cm in the beach sediment. Up to 26.8 new items/m are thought to accumulate daily.Lineage
Maintenance and Update Frequency: notPlannedNotes
CreditRoyal Society for the Protection of Birds
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Darwin Initiative
Farallon Islands Foundation
British Birds
Government of the Pitcairn Islands
Created: 2020-01-06
Data time period: 2015-05-29 to 2015-08-15
Spatial Coverage And Location
text: westlimit=231.632336885; southlimit=-24.4352813662; eastlimit=231.728467256; northlimit=-24.3264598301
User Contributed Tags
Login to tag this record with meaningful keywords to make it easier to discover
(DATA ACCESS - beach debris data [direct download])
- DOI : 10.25959/5E41CCE244C87
- global : 882416e6-c59e-4ba9-a8fc-d26bf3399e6f