Beach Litter Pollution in Sinop Sarikum Lagoon Coast of the Southern Black Sea

In the present study, marine litter pollution on Sarikum Lagoon coast which is one of the significant wetlands of the Black Sea was investigated. Beach litter survey was carried out seasonally between May 2015 and February 2016 according to ` Guidance on Monitoring of Marine Litter in European Seas' published by European Marine Strategy Framework Directive Technical Subgroup on Marine Litter. The average litter density was 1.512 +/- 0.578 items/m(2) and 31.875 +/- 10.684 g/m(2). The results indicated that the most common type of litter was plastic (95.61%) followed by glass/ceramics (1.46%), cloth/textile (1.31%) and the other material types (1.62%) and also foreign origin litter belonging to 25 countries mainly from neighbouring countries were found on the beach. Sarikum beach was classified as extremely dirty according to Clean Coast Index. It was observed that the litter in the region consisted mostly of mixed packaging items (41.12%) and unidentifiable litter items (33.84%). Our results show that the coast of Sarikum Lagoon exposed to a significant amount of marine litter pollution originated from land-based sources.