Chesapeake Bay Plastic Survey

The Chesapeake Bay Plastic Survey aims to establish a baseline for monitoring plastic pollution trends in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Awarded the Woodward and Curran’s Impact Grant, the Ocean Research Project (ORP) will assess bay-wide plastic pollution by exploring plastic particle count as a water quality indicator for monitoring future bay health. In cooperation with its partners, ORP plans to repeat this project biannually to deepen the understanding of the Bay-wide magnitude of plastic pollution, its export to the ocean, and its changes in relation to Bay improvements and climate change.

Project Overview

ORP’s study will be the first to determine the particle concentration of plastic pollution across the United States’ largest estuary, the Chesapeake Bay. The information from this pilot project will inform a dedicated multi-year sampling program by the Chesapeake Bay Program partners at the federal, state, and local levels.

The Issue of Plastic Pollution

Plastic debris, generated by modern human civilization, has infiltrated the deepest trenches of the world’s oceans and concentrated in massive surface areas. An estimated 5.5 trillion pieces of plastic debris are in the world’s oceans. This plastic debris originates from land due to the overuse of plastics in daily life and improper waste disposal. Once plastic trash enters the ocean, nature’s forces and the migration of marine species and birds determine how the plastic material and chemical compounds move and accumulate through the complex marine environment, including the food chain and the Plastisphere. Much of this plastic debris is concentrated in large oceanic current circulation regions called gyres.

Importance of the Survey

The Chesapeake Bay Plastic Survey will:

Establish a Baseline: Provide essential data for monitoring plastic pollution trends.
Inform Future Efforts: Guide a dedicated multi-year sampling program by Chesapeake Bay Program partners.
Enhance Understanding: Improve knowledge of the impact of plastic pollution on the Bay and its connection to broader environmental changes.

Related Research and Findings

To better understand the nature of plastic debris in the ocean, ORP has conducted multiple research expeditions in the Atlantic, Pacific, and Arctic Oceans. These expeditions have provided critical data on the concentration, composition, and extent of plastic debris in the ocean.

Key Publications

ORP's extensive research has contributed to several influential publications, including:

Click here to see a full list of ORP's publications.

LEARNMORE

Marine Pollution Bulletin: Discover more about chemical transfer risk in the seafood chain in our collaborative publication.
Arctic Ocean Plastic Pollution: Our research on minimizing pollution in the Arctic Ocean highlights the global nature of plastic waste and potential solutions using earth-friendly bio-materials.

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Testimonials

“We have worked hard to demonstrate the critical importance of Arctic bathymetry, and particularly the bathymetry around Greenland to our understanding of the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and its impact on global sea level rise. Efforts in the GO-MARIE mission are important in helping us fill critical mapping gaps in these polar regions. We also appreciate ORP’s keen willingness to send the data you collect to Seabed 2030; your mapping efforts have already contributed to the slowly building map of Arctic bathymetry. I understand and support ORP’s desire to obtain a sonar capable of mapping in the deeper waters represented by many of the Arctic fjords so that you can maintain and enhance the Ocean Research Project's mission and very much hope to see this new capability come to fruition.”

Larry Mayer - Professor and Director, Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping