This week the University Centre is hosting a Marine Litter Workshop. The workshop is a part of the Arctic Marine Litter Project run by Wouter Jan Strietman from Wageningen Economic Research and Martine van den Heuvel-Greve from Wageningen Marine Research at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. They research the specifics of marine litter in the Arctic, and have conducted studies on litter gathered from beaches in Svalbard, Jan Mayen, Greenland and now Iceland.

Now they will hold a workshop in Ísafjörður with items gathered from beaches in the Westfjords. Coastal and Marine Management students went to Strandir in the east part of the Westfjords a couple of days ago to collect samples for the workshop. Among them is Amy O’Rourke and this week she is also defending her thesis on this topic, titled “Occurrence, Prevalence, and Classification of Fishing Related Marine Debris in Iceland’s Westfjords.”

In addition to our Coastal Studies students’ local institutions and individuals are involved in the workshop. The Marine and Freshwater Research Institute of Iceland branch observes and advises, students from Menntaskólinn á Ísafirði, the local high school, join the workshop tomorrow to identify and sort the litter along with representatives from Ísafjarðarbær Municipality and the Environment Agency of Iceland.

On Friday Wouter Jan Strietman will also give a talk about the Arctic Marine Litter Project at the first weekly Lunch Lecture this academic year. The talk is open to the public and begins at 12:10 at the University Centre cafeteria.

We look forward to reporting more on this exciting project later on.