Baseline
Marine macro-litter composition and distribution along the Kenyan Coast: The first-ever documented study

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111497Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Local products contributed 88% of the collected litter in all the beaches.

  • Plastics were the most abundant macro-litter encountered in all the beaches.

  • PET bottles from Tanzania constituted the highest number (12.3%) among the other PET bottles encountered in the beaches.

Abstract

Macro-litter accumulation surveys were carried out in six beaches in Kilifi, Mombasa and Kwale Counties. Macro litter were collected, quantified and characterized to determine their composition, distribution and accumulation rates. The results showed that the accumulation rates ranged between 1.53 ± 1.23 and 11.46 ± 7.72 (for dry zones) and 2.69 ± 2.13 and 8.93 ± 7.87 items m−1 day−1 (for wet zones). Plastics and foam were the most abundant litter categories. Local products constituted about 88% of all the collected litter. Food packaging products constituted about 91.3% of all branded litter types. Marine litter pollution particularly by plastics was widespread in all studied coastal counties. However, a significant amount of litter encountered in the beaches was of local origin, thus a local solution to waste management (that will eliminate leakage into marine environments) will considerably reduce marine litter pollution in Kenya.

Section snippets

CRediT authorship contribution statement

E.O. Okuku: Conceptualization, Data curation, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. L.I. Kiteresi: Funding acquisition, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing. G. Owato: Funding acquisition, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing - original draft, Writing -

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgment

We thank the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA) for providing research funds, Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute for infrastructure and technical support, and our project counterpart Kenya Wildlife service staff for support in Pirates beach surveys. A very big thank you to volunteers from KMFRI particularly Benard Oketch, Joy Ndwiga, Quinter Aketch and Purity Chepkemboi for your continued support during the surveys. Patrick Otuo, your efforts in mobilizing

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