This visualization product displays the type of litter in percent per net per year from research and monitoring protocols. EMODnet Chemistry included the collection of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Before 2021, there was no coordinated effort at the regional or European scale for micro-litter. Given this situation, EMODnet Chemistry proposed to adopt the data gathering and data management approach as generally applied for marine data, i.e., populating metadata and data in the CDI Data Discovery and Access service using dedicated SeaDataNet data transport formats. EMODnet Chemistry is currently the official EU collector of micro-litter data from Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) National Monitoring activities (descriptor 10). A series of specific standard vocabularies or standard terms related to micro-litter have been added to SeaDataNet NVS (NERC Vocabulary Server) Common Vocabularies to describe the micro-litter. European micro-litter data are collected by the National Oceanographic Data Centres (NODCs). Micro-litter map products are generated from NODCs data after a test of the aggregated collection including data and data format checks and data harmonization.

A filter is applied to represent only micro-litter sampled according to research and monitoring protocols as MSFD monitoring.

To calculate percentages for each type, formula applied is: Type (%) = (?number of particles of each type)*100 / (?number of particles of all type) When the number of micro-litters was not filled or was equal zero, it was not possible to calculate the percentage.

Standard vocabularies for micro-litter types are taken from Seadatanet's H01 library (https://vocab.seadatanet.org/v_bodc_vocab_v2/search.asp?lib=H01 ). Some morphological types of micro-litters may have been sampled but were not defined by the protocole applied during the survey. They are represented as « undefined micro-litter items ».

Warnings: - the absence of data on the map does not necessarily mean that they do not exist, but that no information has been entered in the National Oceanographic Data Centre (NODC) for this area. - since 03/07/2023, the preferred label « Undefined micro-litter items » has been integrated into the H01 library whereas the labels « microplastic items », « non-plastic man-made micro-particles (e.g. glass, metal, tar) » and «non-plastic filaments (natural fibres, rubber) » have been deprecated. When defined, the material or polymer type can be checked directly in the source data.