On 28 May we revisited the students of San Roque participating, in a new session at the Municipal Centre for Trainment and Employment of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria for the dissemination of the state of the art of the problem of marine debris, especially microplastics.
Microplastics are being studied in the doctoral thesis that develops Tania Montoto, belonging to the research group since 2015. She has also worked in organizations such as Ecologistas en Acción raising awareness of the environmental problem involved in the massive entry of plastics into the marine environment. As a result of the work in this organization, she published, as a co-author, a report in January 2017 conerning this environmental problem. The report gathers more than 300 scientific studies and is listed among the reference materials of the National Center for Environmental Education (CENEAM) in the webpage of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition.
From the point of view of the research, data of very recent and relevant studies was shown, and audiovisual materials were provided as tools to deepen in aspects such as the impacts of the microbeads present in certain cosmetic products. Thus, the talk began with a review of the origins, impacts and ubiquity of these synthetic particles in the environment, ending with a few alternatives and proposals that, as citizenship we can carry out to temper the situation.
The visit was also an opportunity to diseminate some of the projects that are developed from the research group, especially MARCET, within the framework of which we are developing some interesting research tasks related to abundance and distribution of microplastics in seawater of the region, as well as in the stomach contents of stranded cetaceans.