During the COVID-19 pandemic, face masks became a common type of litter invading many different environments, including tourist beaches. However, the presence of face masks on beaches threatens the marine environment with a new form of plastic pollution. In this study, we monitored the occurrence and density of face masks on five tourist beaches along the Moroccan Mediterranean during five months starting from February until June 2021. A total of 321 face masks were recorded on the five beaches, 96.27% of which were single use. The mean density of face masks was 0.0012 ± 0.0008 m⁻². Recreational beaches were the most polluted in the study area. This is related to the important influx of beachgoers on urban beaches compared to resort beaches. With the large number of masks introduced on the beach, we hypothesize that microplastic pollution could increase drastically in the Moroccan Mediterranean in the coming years. Significant efforts are required to reduce this type of waste.

在 COVID-19 大流行期间，口罩成为一种常见的垃圾，侵入了许多不同的环境，包括旅游海滩。然而，海滩上口罩的存在以新形式的塑料污染威胁着海洋环境。在这项研究中，我们从2021年2月到2021年6月的5个月内，监测了摩洛哥地中海沿岸5个旅游海滩的口罩出现情况和密度。这5个海滩总共记录了321个口罩，其中96.27%是单个口罩。使用。面罩的平均密度为0.0012±0.0008m ^-2 。休闲海滩是研究区域污染最严重的。这与与度假胜地海滩相比，城市海滩的海滩游客大量涌入有关。随着海滩上大量口罩的使用，我们假设未来几年摩洛哥地中海地区的微塑料污染可能会急剧增加。需要付出巨大努力来减少此类废物。