Leading and learning in the fight against marine litter

The Barents Sea has been found to be the most polluted Arctic Sea along the Northern Sea route (Тятте, А., 2019). This is what the TransArktika-2019 expedition reported from its 5,500-kilometre-long trip along the Russian Arctic coast from the Barents Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk. For 90 days, the expedition filtered 75,000 litres of water in order to assess the level of pollution in the Russian Arctic (Тятте, А., 2019). The surface water, up to 4.5 meters deep, has been found to be contaminated with pesticides and other toxic substances. According to scientists, these stem from plastics.

Plastics take many pathways to reach the sea. Sometimes, they originate from land-based sources. This is often due to poor waste management, with plastic packaging and other consumer items carried by wind and rivers to the sea. Other times, this pollution comes directly from the sea. Beach clean-up efforts in the Svalbard region have shown that fishing activities may account for around 80 per cent of plastic waste (Bergman, 2017). Other waste also stems from maritime transport. Additionally, scientists have found that ocean currents, particularly the thermohaline circulation, are carrying marine litter through the Atlantic and all the way up to the Arctic (A. Cózar et al., 2017). The Barents Sea seems to be one of the traps for this debris, storing around 79,000 tons of plastics, according to a study conducted in the south of Svalbard (Buhl-Mortensen and Buhl-Mortensen, 2017).

Universities have also been involved in studying marine litter in the Russian Arctic through field work in the Barents Sea. Since 2012, NArFU has been conducting annual “Arctic Floating University” scientific and educational expeditions monitoring plastic pollution in the open sea and along the Barents Sea coast. Over 600 people took part in 12 expeditions, including 260 students from partner universities from all over the world. These expeditions involved analysing macro and micro particles, investigating their provenance, and assessing the damage they inflict on the environment.

As part of the Russian federal program “Arctic Clean-up”, a special focus was put on the Franz Josef Land Archipelago, where between 4 million and 12 million barrels of fuel and lubricants were abandoned on the sites of old military bases and small working settlements. The archipelago is one of the most contaminated areas of the Arctic. Since 2017, scientists have been involved through the “Arctic Floating University” and clean-ups to determine the extent of environmental damage and identify the impact of fuels and lubricants on the soil. In 2020, a new project has been launched to reconstruct the ecosystem on the Franz Josef Land Archipelago.

“The purpose of these expeditions is to raise a new generation of researchers who take up fieldwork, study the Arctic across disciplines, understand the changes happening in this region and the fragile nature of the existing ecosystem, and then bring this accumulated knowledge back to the university”, explains Marina Kalinina.

The Norwegian-Russian cooperation against marine litter has focused primarily on the fishing sectors of the two countries, both quite active in the Barents Sea.

In 2017, the Fishing Industry Union of the North, the Union of Fishermen of Norway, and the Association of Coastal Fisheries and Farmers from Murmansk released a joint statement, agreeing to work together towards preventing pollution in the Barents Sea. The statement was a result of the workshop “Marine Litter: Sources, consequences and decisions” hosted by the Norwegian Consulate General in Murmansk with about 100 participants from Russia and Norway. This initiative originated from the “Marine Plastic Pollution in the Arctic: Origin, status, costs and incentives for prevention” (MARP) project led by NORCE (2016-2018) and implemented in cooperation with the Arctic University of Norway, the Norwegian Polar Institute, Akvaplan Niva, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and KSC RAS. 

Ludmila Ivanova, Senior Researcher at KSC RAS, explains the need to involve fishing companies in the dialogue on marine litter – assessing their awareness of the problem and getting their recommendations for prevention. This was the reason for the survey conducted within the RE-D-USE project campaign “New knowledge for reduction and utilization of marine waste from fisheries”, led by the Nordland Research Institute within the Arctic 2030 programme, funded by the Ministry for Climate and Environment of Norway (2017-2019).

The survey results show that fishermen desire to participate in solving the problem at the local level and in a wider international context. In general, this is in line with the global trend of turning the problem of plastic pollution into a promising business for recycling waste and obtaining useful products. At the same time, there is an obvious need for information on local conditions, such as stakeholders, availability of infrastructure, categories of marine litter, and alternatives for its transportation.

In 2018, the Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Ecology organized a Russian-Norwegian seminar on marine pollution in Moscow. The seminar highlighted the existing knowledge gaps of relevant stakeholders in regard to marine litter, to address these issues in the future. A follow-up seminar is to take place in Norway, but is currently on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic.