Marine debris washing up on beaches on Bird Island has been monitored since 1989 with over 9,000 items of debris recovered up until present day. In addition to the raw data, a summary of the data by year or by debris description is available. Occasions when no debris was found, or it was not possible to carry out a survey, are recorded in the metadata. This data is submitted to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) as part of their Marine Debris Programme.

Beached marine debris has been monitored on Signy Island since 1991. Data collection was carried out during summer months across three sites on the island: Foca Cove, Cummings Cove and Starfish Cove. This dataset summarises the amount of beached debris from monthly surveys by mass and type, with additional descriptions available. This monitoring contributes to the CCAMLR (Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) Marine debris program and is part of the long-term monitoring carried out by the British Antarctic Survey at Signy Island. Ecosystems component of BAS Polar Science for Planet Earth Programme, funded by NERC.

Incidences of Antarctic Fur Seals entangled in man-made debris have been recorded at Bird Island since 1988. The majority of entanglements have been Antarctic Fur Seals caught in plastic packaging bands, synthetic line and fishing nets. Where possible these are removed by scientists working at the research base. This data is collected as part of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources''s Ecosystem Monitoring Program (CEMP).

Incidences of Antarctic Fur Seals entangled in man-made debris have been recorded since 2008 at Grytviken, South Georgia. The majority of entanglements have been Antarctic Fur Seals caught in plastic packaging bands, synthetic line and fishing nets. Where possible these are removed by scientists working at the research base. This data is collected as part of CCAMLR''s Marine Debris Programme.

This dataset contains raw beaching data computed by marine debris simulations (run using OceanParcels) for a range of physical scenarios (surface currents from GLORYS12V1 (https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2021.698876), Stokes drift from WAVERYS (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10236-020-01433-w), and surface winds from ERA5 (https://doi.org/10.1002/qj.3803)), as described in the accompanying manuscript. Through postprocessing, debris ‘connectivity’ matrices can be computed, providing predictions for the main terrestrial and marine source regions of plastic debris accumulating at remote islands in the western Indian Ocean. These simulations include beaching and sinking processes, and a set of example matrices is provided here (https://doi.org/10.5287/bodleian:DEdqwXZQw). However, these matrices can be recomputed for different sinking and beaching rates using the scripts archived here (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7351695), or see here (https://github.com/nvogtvincent/WIO_Marine_Debris/) for the live version with documentation. These predictions will be useful for environmental practitioners in the western Indian Ocean to assess source regions for marine debris accumulating at islands of interest, and when this debris is likely to beach. The data were produced as part of the Marine Dispersal and Retention in the Western Indian Ocean project funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) grant NE/S007474/1. See linked online references on this record for cited items given above.

The presence of marine debris and other material from human activity within bird colonies on Bird Island has been recorded since 1992. Bird colonies on the Island are regulary monitored for the presence of debris as part of CCAMLR''s Marine Debris Program. Debris can be found within the colonies, entangling the birds, or within diet samples. Where possible, all debris are removed. The date of survey, debris type and debris dimensions are recorded. This data is submitted to the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) as part of their Marine Debris Programme.