Marine Litter Tracking and Hotspot Mapping in the Global Ocean and Caribbean
This project follows plastic waste through a global ocean model to answer two questions: where litter released by a country ends up, and where the litter on a given coastline came from.
Olmo Zavala-Romero Eric P. ChassignetXiaobiao XuPhilippe Miron
Goals
Quantify where mismanaged plastic waste released into the ocean travels, where it accumulates on coastlines, and how those pathways and hotspots evolve across global and regional scales. This research line connects country-level plastic sources to downstream beaching and offshore accumulation, with a focus on the Wider Caribbean Region (WCR), one of the most plastic-concentrated areas in the world's oceans.
Methods
We use Lagrangian particle tracking embedded in a global ocean circulation model to simulate the transport of mismanaged plastic waste (MPW) from river and coastal release points. The framework builds on worldwide MPW inventories and tracks particles forward in time to estimate destination countries and coastline sources. For the Caribbean extension, we seed plastics across the WCR, identify accumulation hotspots, and analyze seasonal variability driven by surface currents, winds, and beaching criteria. Results are compared against available observations and published litter datasets where possible.
Key findings
The 2021 global study showed that countries far apart are connected through a complex web of ocean pathways, enabling quantitative answers to where litter from a given country goes and where litter washing onto a given coastline originates. The modeled distribution agrees with limited observations and prior studies, and the results are available through an interactive atlas (marinelitter.fsu.edu). The 2024 Caribbean study found that most plastic converges quickly onto coastlines under strong surface currents and easterly winds, with major hotspots along western Central America, Mexico, Texas, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. Hotspot intensity varies seasonally with circulation and wind patterns, while accumulation near Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela is strongly tied to nearby MPW sources.