Jessica Melvin is lead author on a new paper in Frontiers in Marine Science that provides a critical intervention on existing approaches to shoreline plastic pollution research. Drawing on a comprehensive survey of over 3,000 sites in the published literature, the study found that existing research has focused overwhelmingly on sandy beaches and has almost exclusively ignored beaches with coarse gravels, snow and ice, or vegetation like seaweed and kelp. Jess and her colleagues call for more detailed methodological reporting and a widening of sample sites beyond sandy beaches. The full paper is available here.
