Microplastics are ubiquitous emerging contaminants found in every habitat surveyed, building upon international databases globally.

Costs and accessibility often correlate to few deep sea sediment surveys, restricting the number of stations within a given sampling area.

An extensive survey of the Porcupine Seabight and Porcupine Bank canyons resulted in identifying microplastics in deep sea sediment surface layers from 33 of the 44 stations sampled (75%), with a total of 83 particles (74 synthetic and 9 natural) recorded.

More details on this research led by Dr Róisín Nash, can be found at https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/acs.est.2c05926