Figure 4 | Scientific Reports

Figure 4

From: Industrialised fishing nations largely contribute to floating plastic pollution in the North Pacific subtropical gyre

Figure 4

Land-based and maritime distribution of modelled sources of floating plastic debris found in the NPGP area. (a) Lagrangian particles detected in the NPGP area (white square, 97% of particles were detected inside the white contour line) were initially released either from river mouth locations8 (white circles) or from observed fishing grounds48 quantified by the level of fishing effort in h/km2 from vessels equipped with AIS. Fishing effort was differentiated by type of gear. Three fishing techniques, out of nine simulated, represented most of the identified effort connected to the NPGP: trawling (b), fixed gear (including set nets, set longlines, traps and pots) (c) and drifting longlines (d) with respectively 48%, 18% and 14% of the total simulated effort carried by particles found in the NPGP area in 2019. These maps were generated using QGIS version 3.8.3 (www.qgis.org).

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