The study aimed to collect and analyze microplastic samples from the surface waters of the North and South Atlantic Oceans, conducted onboard the Bark Europa, a traditional three-masted, square-rigged Barque. The data was collected in autumn 2021 over 17 trawl locations across the Atlantic Ocean from Scheveningen (the Netherlands) to Montevideo (Uruguay). Surface water samples were collected using a Manta trawl (mouth area: 40.5 cm², mesh size: 500 µm; cod end: 333 µm), towed for 30 minutes at each sampling, meanwhile monitoring of environmental conditions such as sea state, wind speed, and salinity was done. Three samples were collected at each site, except for one location where a trawl was discarded due to technical issues. The trawls were monitored and adjusted to ensure smooth sampling outside the vessel's wake zone. Microplastic samples collected during the study were processed using a series of stacked sieves (5 mm, 1mm, 0.3mm) and rinsed with filtered fresh water. For particles with largest dimension bigger than 1 mm, visual identification was done, however could not be done reliably for those particles smaller than 1 mm. For all particles, chemical purification and stereoscopy was done onboard, followed by ATR-FTIR spectroscopy in the laboratory to identify the polymer types of the microplastics. Cross-contamination was minimized through procedural blanks and careful equipment handling. The microplastic particles collected were categorized by shape (film, foam, fragment, line, microfiber, microbead, industrial pellet).