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Counting microplastics off Funchal
Six teenagers, one trawl net the size of a pillowcase and a morning's sail along the Madeira coast. The samples went to a lab; the questions stayed on board.
Oceanhand CiênciaFunchal, Madeira
A manta trawl looks like a small aeroplane made of netting. Towed beside the boat for twenty minutes at walking pace, it skims the top few centimetres of the sea and keeps anything bigger than a third of a millimetre.
The students on board are youth ambassadors with Madeira Blue Coast. Each one took a turn at the winch, labelled a jar and wrote the position, wind and sea state in the log. Back on land the jars went to the research partner's lab for sorting under a microscope.
Why a small sample still matters
One morning's tows cannot describe a whole coast. Repeated on the same lines every month, by the same group, they start to show how the counts move with the season and the wind.
Resultados
Participe
The ambassador programme takes new students each spring. The lab runs open sorting sessions twice a year.