Marine Debris Project Final Report 2014

What is next for the marine debris project?The next steps for the CSIRO national marine debris project are continuing to unfold. We continue to take arisk-based approach to understand marine debris impacts on wildlife, expanding on our recent work withseabirds and turtles (see publications provided in the Appendices). We are looking more deeply atpopulation and species level impacts of plastic litter on several taxa and we are applying new methods wehave recently developed to look at population level exposure to plastics in seabirds.We are collaborating with colleagues around the world to improve the local, regional, and globalunderstanding of marine litter inputs to the environment. We are particularly focused on evaluating wastemanagement activities and policy effectiveness as part of our efforts to understand where, why, when andhow litter is being lost in the supply chain and ending up along the coast. One of our key goals is to provideinformation that can help to reduce litter inputs into the environment prior to biodiversity impacts. Wecontinue to try and work with managers, policy makers and other members of the public to providemeaningful information to help people, communities and industries make informed decisions.10 | Understanding the effects of marine debris on wildlife