Scotia Sea, a marine region situated between the Falkland Islands and the Antarctic Peninsula, which is considered the main route and melting area for drifting icebergs. “The icebergs carry debris from the [...] region,” Dr Gerhard Kuhn, geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research and co-author of the study, explained.

Subsequently climate models were used to evaluate

publication of the scientific journal Marine Pollution Bulletin by Dr. Melanie Bergmann, biologist and deep-sea expert at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association [...] Helgoland will analyse them for micro-plastics,” says Melanie Bergmann. Micro-plastics can be ingested by marine animals including commercially harvested prawns and fish and enter the human food chain.  

During [...] Bergmann / Michael Klages (2012): Increase of litter at the Arctic deep-sea observatory HAUSGARTEN. Marine

Pollution Bulletin, available online at:  dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2012.09.018

environmental effects if nothing would be done, the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar- and Marine Research in Bremerhaven, Germany, granted permission to the request of the RV Polarstern [...] helicopter. The activities were focussed first on the recovery of 304 fuel drums. Then debris scattered about the floe was collected, and finally two tractors were taken aboard by crane

Marine litter
In a new study, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI), show for the first time that marine litter can even be found at the [...] study were collected in the course of a study on marine mammals and seabirds on board of RV Polarstern: “We just took advantage of these surveys to count marine litter.” Scientists refer to chances such as [...] remains unclear how the litter made it so far north, it is likely to pose new problems for local marine life, the authors report on the online portal of the scientific journal Polar Biology. Plastic has

and his beautiful wife Thetis. All the unbaptised “land lubbers” among us were baptised with new marine names, in accordance with seafaring traditions. Each person received a beautiful certificate with [...] on board: Dr. Inga Kirstein from the AAU, Aalborg, in Denmark we were on the lookout for plastic debris. In the middle of last week we transversed the edge of an area which is known to be a type of plastic [...] therefore a growing threat for humans and nature. Most plastic types are poorly degradable in the marine environment. They become brittle and subsequently break down in small particles, so called microplastics

showing off and demonstrating what they are capable of, also on this expedition. All gear used for marine science is deployed (one by one, not simultaneously!). You must have experienced yourself the complexity [...] or ice sheet), it may just gently touch the seafloor, thereby depositing and piling up the rocky debris, which it carries at its base, in form of a characteristic feature with the scientific name “ Grounding

Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment (ICBM), the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) were able [...] said Pahnke, the head of the Max Planck Research Group for Marine Isotope Geochemistry based at the ICBM and the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, explaining that each layer of water [...] Fröllje of the ICBM – the two main authors of the study – extracted tiny teeth and other skeletal debris of fossil fish from the sediment to analyse their content of isotopes of the rare earth metal neodymium

the enclosed material – referred to as ice-rafted debris - with them. When an iceberg melts during its journey, the ice-rafted debris sinks and is deposited on the seafloor.Icebergs once [...] University, jointly with experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) in Bremerhaven, has shown that this transport of freshwater into the Atlantic may

This is reported by Mine Tekman from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) together with three other experts in their review article in Science, which devotes [...] who helped develop AWI's online portal litterbase.org, which compiles the scientific literature on marine litter and its impacts in a continuously updated way.

A poorly reversible pollutant of remote areas [...] Research (UFZ) and Professor at the RWTH Aachen University explains: “In remote environments, plastic debris cannot be removed by cleanups, and weathering of large plastic items will inevitably result in the

bloodstream. And the flood of debris is bound to get worse: global plastic production is expected to double by 2045.The consequences are serious. Today, virtually all marine organisms investigated – from [...] stress and inflammations in the tissues of marine animals, and even runs in the blood of humans.”

The available data on potential feedback effects between plastic debris and climate change is particularly thin [...] Marine Litter
Even the High North can’t escape the global threat of plastic pollution. An international review study just released by the Alfred Wegener Institute shows, the flood of plastic has reached