Prevalence of marine litter alongthe Indian beaches : A preliminaryaccount on its status andcomposition
2017
Beach litter are man-made objects discarded directly or indirectly. This
study brings out synoptic picture of status and composition of beach
litter from 254 selected beaches along the maritime States of Peninsular
coast of India as well as the Union Territories of Andaman and
Lakshadweep Islands from the one time observation conducted between
October 2013 and January 2014 for the first time. These beaches were
classified and graded with colour codes according to the levels of beach
litter. Beach litter from different maritime States and the UTs showed that
Odisha coast has the lowest (0.31 g/m2) quantity and Goa coast (205.75
g/m2) the highest quantity of beach debris. Archipelagic coasts of
Andamans as well as Lakshadweep recorded values higher than Kerala,
Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. Samples of
debris collected from beaches revealed that all the items were domestic
and anthropogenic discards. Plastic litters such as single use carry bags
and sachets of soft drinks, edible oils, detergents, beverages, cases of
cosmetics, toothpaste, PET bottles, ice cream containers etc., recorded
highest mean of 25.47g/m2 from Goa coast and the lowest (0.08 g/m2)
from Odisha. The relative percentage of mean values of plastic (B group)
items in beach debris along the Indian coast registered highest mean
percentage from Maharashtra (81 %) and the lowest mean from beaches
of Andhra Pradesh (7%). The two island Union Territories registered 40%
(Lakshadweep) and 47% (Andamans) of plastics over the total debris,
while the national average was only 14%.
Available online at: www.mbai.org.in doi: 10.6024/jmbai.2017.59.1.1953-03
Out of the total 254 beaches surveyed, 51 beaches were graded as very
clean with green (<1 g/m2) colour, 122 beaches were graded as Clean
and depicted by blue colour. Beaches of very clean grade (<1 g/m2)
were found in Kerala (17), Maharashtra (12), Tamil Nadu (2), Andhra
Pradesh (4), Odisha (7) and West Bengal (3). Whereas extremely littered
beaches (>100 g/m2) were found in Karnataka (13), Goa, Gujarat, and
Andaman Island. With reference to the coastal population and per capita
share of beach debris, Goa registered highest values (40.97 kg/head)
and the Odisha coast registered the lowest values (0.005 kg/head).
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