PlasticFlow is a campaign by researchers from the Balearics Oceanography Centre. Focusing on microplastic pollution in the western Mediterranean, samples were taken over a period of a month in seas off Catalonia and the Balearics as well as in the vicinity of the Columbretes Islands (Valencia).
Samples of various kinds were taken three nautical miles from shore and further out (thirteen miles) and at depths of up to 200 metres.
The researchers are now in the process of analysing the samples, but they have already drawn attention to what they found off Mallorca's east coast - 11,600 microplastic particles in one cubic metre of water, with microplastics defined as items smaller than five millimetres.
The east coast, they says, has "more constant values, with more continuous pollution than in other areas." The pollution levels are "outrageous, higher than those established by the Barcelona Convention to define what is considered to be a poor environmental status of the sea".
They refer back to a 2017 sample off Cala d'Or, which reached 32,000 particles per cubic metre of water.