The countries surrounding the North Pacific Ocean contain some of the most densely populated regions on the planet. The North Pacific absorbs the burden of this footprint by being the final sink of many pollutants. In terms of plastic pollution, no large open ocean region is more affected than the North Pacific. Despite this, PICES has not had a stable expert group to specifically keep pace with plastic debris and pollutants. The first expert group on marine pollution dates back to the beginning of PICES, with Working Group 2 on
Development of common assessment methodology for marine pollution (
WG-2). In 2017, the Study Group on
Marine Microplastics (
SG-MMP) was formed and led by Won Joon Shim. Working Group on
Indicators of Marine Plastic Pollution (
WG-42) took over where SG-MMP left off. Co-led by Jennifer Lynch and ChengJun Sun, WG-42 was especially productive, with members convening scientific sessions at multiple PICES conferences, co-leading a session at the 2021 ICES annual meeting, and participating and co-leading several sessions at the 7th International Marine Debris Conference in Busan, Korea in 2022. Also in 2022, members of WG-42 published
three peer-reviewed papers summarizing their work identifying indicators of plastic pollution in the North Pacific, which also outlined monitoring guidelines for seawater, beaches, and biota. WG-42 formally concluded in 2024.
The bioindicators work that came out of
WG-42 began an international collaboration,
The Global Plastic Bioindicators Project, which was endorsed last year as a Project for the UN Decade of Ocean Science under the program
SmartNet (an ICES-PICES collaboration). This Project just produced its
first paper, which is much aligned with the recently-concluded WG-42. As such, we expect this proposed Section to interact closely with the Advisory Panel on the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science, the Section on Marine Birds and Mammals, as well as our PICES parent Committee, Marine Environmental Quality (
MEQ).
Marine plastic pollution is here to stay. In this world, PICES should have a standing expert group that member nations can consult for longstanding, as well as novel unexpected pollutant pulses, discoveries, and concerns. In concert with other stressors like climate change, pollution may affect living marine resources and human welfare in the PICES region and is thus well aligned with the PICES mission. It is important that PICES keeps pace with plastic pollution research and collaboration on the world stage with other intergovernmental science working groups (e.g., ICES Working Group on
Marine Litter (
WGML); GESAMP Working Group 40 on
Plastics and Micro-Plastics in the Ocean (
WG 40)). To do so, PICES needs to have an expert group that can directly interface with these sister groups in other regions as well as with representatives in PICES member nations.