The Great Barrier Reef is located at the east coast of Australia and is the world's largest and longest coral reef system. It is the biggest single structure made by living organisms that gives home to over 1,500 species of fish, abundant marine life and over 200 types of birds.

 

The Whitsunday Islands are a collection of 74 islands off the central coast of Queensland including the spectacular bright white sands of Whitehaven Beach.

 

This expedition was the first of its kind and allowed us to predict and monitor the amount of microplastics in this conservation area. For the very first time we introduced an double net approach that allowed us to collect samples of sizes between 50 - 300µm. This is a very important step towards the understanding of the occurrence and distribution of smaller sized plastic particles