Lost and found: Patterns of marine litter accumulation on the remote Island of Santa Luzia, Cabo Verde.

Santa Luzia, an uninhabited island in the archipelago of Cabo Verde, serves as a natural laboratory and important nesting site for loggerhead turtles Caretta. The island constitutes an Integral Natural Reserve and a Marine Protected Area. We assessed marine litter accumulation on sandy beaches of the island and analysed their spatial patterns using two sampling methods: at a fine scale, sand samples from 1 × 1 m squares were collected, identifying debris larger than 1 mm; at a coarse scale, drone surveys were conducted to identify visible marine debris (>25 mm) in aerial images. We sampled six points on three beaches of the island: Achados (three points), Francisca (two points) and Palmo Tostão (one point). Then, we modelled the abundance of marine debris using topographical variables as explanatory factors, derived from digital surface models (DSM). Our findings reveal that the island is a significant repository for marine litter (>84% composed of plastics), with up to 917 plastic items per m

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Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.