A review of peer-reviewed publications was undertaken, focusing on coastal and marine microplastics relevant to South Eastern Australia (South Australia, Victoria, and New South Wales), as well as from ongoing citizen science programmes from AUSMAP. This dataset summarises basic information about the microplastics studies: the location of the study; if the study focused on water, sediment or biota; the type of biota (for biotic studies); and the DOI of the publication. Although the primary focus of this study was restricted to southeastern Australia, studies collated from other regions have also been included in this dataset. The outcomes of the literature review for other regions (QLD, NT, SA, WA, Tas) should not be considered comprehensive.

This data publication contains the mass spectrometry chemical characterization of microplastic and nanoplastic chemical analysis. The data from this study includes mass spectra of pure, mixed, and weathered microplastics and nanoplastics at high and low fragmentation, extracted ion chronograms, Kendrick mass defect plots, code, and the derived and processed data. The data analysis code (MATLAB 2022a*) used for unsupervised learning of cluster and compositional relationships is also included. The code employs principal component analysis for dimensionality reduction, learns the resulting datasets' latent dimensionality, and completes Gaussian mixture modeling and fuzzy c-means clustering.*Any mention of commercial products is for information only; it does not imply recommendation or endorsement by NIST.

The data provides information relevant to determining time series estimates of anthropogenic marine debris contamination across the IMOS National Mooring Network (NMN) including National Reference Stations (NRS), with a focus on microplastics (plastics < 5 mm). Specifically, it summarises the physical (i.e., size, shape and colour) properties and chemical nature (i.e., synthetic, semi-synthetic or naturally derived, and polymer type) along with the associated sampling coordinates and field collection data. This dataset, together with other variables already measured across the NMN (e.g., surface salinity, current, plankton, fish larvae), has the potential to provide insight into abundance, spatial distribution and fluctuations in anthropogenic marine debris, as well as identify potential source materials, geographic (i.e., land-based) inputs and fate. Information on such contamination is critical to inform policy and management on marine pollution in Australia’s marine estate and to assess the effectiveness of policy responses.

This study estimated the load of surface microplastics in the surface waters around Scotland from 2014-01-06 to 2020-01-18. Microplastics data were collected using neuston net aboard MRV Scotia, MRV Alba na Mara and RV Sir John Murray. This dataset contains the results from all 398 surface net tows, in a spreadsheet format.

This dataset describes the quantity, morphology, and polymer identity of microplastics in the water column and surficial sediments of Milwaukee-Area streams, the Milwaukee Harbor, and Lake Michigan (Wisconsin). Water samples were collected at 10 locations, 2-4 times each, from May to September, 2016. At the 4 shallowest locations, water was collected only at the water surface. At the remaining 6 locations, water was collected at the water surface and at 1-4 depths below the surface. Sediment samples were collected once, in June 2016, at a subset of 9 locations. Sampling and analysis methods are described in the Processing Steps section of the metadata. These data are interpreted in the following journal article: Lenaker, P. L., Baldwin, A. K., Corsi, S. R., Mason, S. A., Reneau, P. C., & Scott, J. W. (2019). Vertical Distribution of Microplastics in the Water Column and Surficial Sediment from the Milwaukee River Basin to Lake Michigan. Environmental Science & Technology, 53(21), 12227–12237, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.9b03850.

The San Francisco Estuary Institute and 5 Gyres completed a comprehensive regional study of microplastic pollution of a major urban estuary and adjacent ocean environment, sampling in stormwater, treated wastewater, surface water, sediment, and prey fish.