Arrangement and prospect of the marine litter monitoring method on the Japanese coast

Abstract

ABSTRACT : “Tsushima Conference on the Issue of Marine litter on Islands Beaches” was convened at Tsushima City of Nagasaki Prefecture, October 2004. In this conference, the problems of marine litter with various sources and causes were argued about the following matters as one of the ever-increasing serious global environmental problems. The increased costs of recovery and disposal at the coastal local governments, the need of control and measurement of the litter outflow from rivers of our country as well as from coasts of East Asian countries, and the necessity and effectiveness of making an effort in collaboration with different actors. In addition, a need of a monitoring program as a tool to solve the problems was also discussed. In this report, it organized the information on the monitoring methods of marine litter, and the future of the marine litter’s monitoring was discussed by making use of the idea of “open source” and “platform”.