Beaching patterns of plastic debris along the Indian Ocean rim

van der Mheen, Mirjam; van Sebille, Erik; Pattiaratchi, Charitha

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/os-16-1317-2020

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-16-1317-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/os-16-1317-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 16, issue 5

Research article

| Highlight paper

|

30 Oct 2020

Research article | Highlight paper |

| 30 Oct 2020

Beaching patterns of plastic debris along the Indian Ocean rim

Mirjam van der Mheen, Erik van Sebille, and Charitha Pattiaratchi

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Final revised paper (published on 30 Oct 2020)
Preprint (discussion started on 15 Jun 2020)

Interactive discussion

Status: closed

AC: Author comment | RC: Referee comment | SC: Short comment | EC: Editor comment

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- Supplement

RC1: 'Review', Anonymous Referee #1, 26 Jul 2020
- AC1: 'Response to Reviewer 1', Mirjam van der Mheen, 09 Sep 2020
RC2: 'Review of the manuscript “Beaching patterns of plastic debris along the Indian Ocean rim” by Mirjam van der Mheen, Erik van Sebille and Charitha Pattiaratchi', Anonymous Referee #2, 13 Aug 2020
- AC2: 'Response to Reviewer 2', Mirjam van der Mheen, 09 Sep 2020

Peer-review completion

AR: Author's response | RR: Referee report | ED: Editor decision

AR by Mirjam van der Mheen on behalf of the Authors (09 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

ED: Publish as is (10 Sep 2020) by Anna Rubio

AR by Mirjam van der Mheen on behalf of the Authors (19 Sep 2020) Author's response Manuscript

Short summary

A large percentage of global ocean plastic enters the Indian Ocean through rivers, but the fate of these plastics is generally unknown. In this paper, we use computer simulations to show that floating plastics beach and end up on coastlines throughout the Indian Ocean. Coastlines where a lot of plastic enters the ocean are heavily affected by beaching plastic, but plastics can also beach far from the source on remote islands and countries that contribute little plastic pollution of their own.