27 May, 2025
Marina Port de Mallorca recently welcomed the 13.2-metre S/Y Carlina, who Sea Plastics is using on a journey of more than 2,000 nautical miles through the waters of France, Portugal and Spain.
During her stopover in Palma de Mallorca, one of the thirty plus planned throughout her scientific expedition promoted by the Sea Plastics association and the Spanish Centre for Scientific Research, Marina Port de Mallorca provided a berth to show its support for this environmental initiative.
This journey sets out to study the plastisphere, a term that refers to microbial communities that colonise and thrive on plastics. In particular, Sea Plastics will be analysing the impact on bacteria during changes in conditions, between the change of a river and the Atlantic Ocean, and then between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.
The crew, formed by student volunteers, carries out a systematic collection of microplastics, gathering samples through a net. Once onboard, they select the samples and keep them frozen for later analysis in their laboratories.
"We still don't have definitive results, but we can disclose that we've found a significantly higher concentration of microplastics in the Mediterranean compared to the Atlantic", explains Amélie Baptee from Sea Plastics. "If in the Atlantic we have to drag the net for an hour and a half to get an adequate number of samples, in the Mediterranean thirty or forty-five minutes is enough", Ms Baptee continues.
These particles are key in the study that Sea Plastics is currently conducting as certain types of microorganisms colonise new habitats that could be threatened by potentially pathogenic bacteria.
Mallorca has also been a sampling point in this study, the results of which will be published in 2026.
An association with a young spirit and scientific allegiance
Sea Plastics is an association created in 2016, founded by three AgroParisTech students — Simon, Ernest and Aymeric — who are passionate about the sea and sailing. Their goal was to spend six months combining science, adventure, and marine conservation. Since then, every year a new crew of students further pursues this project, combining research and environmental awareness.
This is the first time that the boat has set sail from La Rochelle, in western France, to call at ports in Portugal and Spain before reaching Toulon, allowing the crew to embark upon an itinerary that includes the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, historically more studied by the association. This choice was justified by the particularities of the Mediterranean Sea, where the very low water renewal rate makes plastic waste more visible and concentrated.
Marina Port de Mallorca is pleased to support initiatives such as Sea Plastics, underlining its commitment to sustainability and the protection of the marine environment.
