Whether monitoring the presence of plastic or analysing its impact, researchers in the Arctic cannot simply adopt methods developed in other regions

The variety of methods scientists use to assess how much plastic is piling up in parts of the Arctic runs the gamut, from picking up plastic by hand along stretches of coast to using remotely operated vehicles to survey the floor of the ocean. In the future, if all goes well, more monitoring could be done by drones and satellites.

There are, of course, international standards for many of these plastic monitoring methods. In the case of counting plastic on the shore, a beach should be 100 meters long, and, to get a true sense of the extent to which it is being polluted, scientists or their citizen helpers should return three or four times in a year.

In the Arctic, it is unlikely that a clean-up can – or even should – check the boxes for methods developed in other parts of the world, according to participants in the fourth day of the International Symposium on Plastics in the Arctic and the Sub-Arctic Region.

Finding a beach that is 100 meters long can prove difficult, for example. And then there is the problem of just getting there in the first place, according to Peter Murphy, the Alaska regional coordinator for the NOAA Marine Debris Program.

“In many parts of the world, if you want to go out and do monitoring, it’s as simple as renting a car, packing it up with field equipment, and going to the beach,” Murphy says. “And that's just not the reality [in the Arctic]. You have to have a lot more logistical thought that goes into it.”

Even satellites may not be as useful in the region as elsewhere, according to Lauren Biermann, an earth-observation scientist with Plymouth Marine Laboratory. This is because the sensors they use cannot see through the Arctic’s frequent cloud cover, although this is something she reckons can be compensated for by the frequency with which satellites pass overhead.

There is also a difference in research approaches between people who live in the Arctic and those who work in the Arctic but live elsewhere, according to Max Liboiron, an associate professor of geography at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in St. John’s.

“The scientific community that is not based in the Arctic and the folks who live in the Arctic, their research questions, their concerns, and their metrics often don't match up,” she says.

Liboiron analyses marine plastics that are collected by a local researcher, Liz Pijogge, who is based in Nain, Nunatsiavut. The two have realized that locals and foreign researchers want to study different things. People in the North want to know how plastics affect a species like char because it is an important source of food for them. Those from outside the region, meanwhile, prefer to look at the northern fulmar because, as a migratory seabird that is known to ingest a lot of plastic, it has been deemed a reference standard by scientific groups.

“That is not inherently bad,” Liboiron says, “but they don’t harmonize.”

For some groups that live in the region, marine plastic litter represents not just pollution but also problematic consumption patterns, marked by a shift from traditional products to plastic replacements.

“The nature of traditional products is that they wear out, and they most likely don’t leave much trace in nature afterwards,” says Gunn-Britt Retter, the head of the Saami Council’s Arctic and Environmental Unit. “We should produce quality products rather than produce waste. Right now, I think a lot of the challenge is that we have a lot of cheap and very mixed products that are easy to throw away.”

Lauren Divine, director of the Ecosystem Conservation Office at the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, Alaska, shares those concerns. Part of her work deals with addressing the effect of plastic on wildlife populations that people in the community consume.

“Marine litter poses myriad threats to our wildlife,” she says. These threats include animals getting entangled in discarded nets or having their habitats degraded. Ingestion of plastic is another threat, and it raises concerns about human health as well.

Addressing the problem locally, through things like beach clean-ups, is only a partial and temporary fix. Putting an end to plastic pollution will mean requiring changes from producers of plastic items – for example, manufacturers of fishing gear should make it traceable. We will also need to require that users of plastic items handle them properly – for example, fishing operations should be responsible for retrieving lost gear.

“It’s such a complex problem that we have to address the funding, the prevention, and how we’re thinking about producing and using products to really change the landscape of ending up with a bunch of litter on our shorelines that, ultimately, the community is responsible for cleaning up,” Divine says.

She accepts that we all play some role in creating plastic pollution. Like Retter, though, she believes that a different attitude towards plastic starts with different plastic products.

“There are roles and responsibilities for both producers and consumers,” she says. “But we need intentional thought towards creation of materials that are making products that will not wear out or are designed to become waste.”