On Advances, Challenges and Potentials of Remote Sensing Image Analysis in Marine Debris and Suspected Plastics Monitoring

TL;DR

This paper critically reviews recent advances and ongoing challenges in remote sensing image analysis for marine debris and plastics monitoring, emphasizing the need for further research and technological development.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of literature milestones, discusses current challenges, and suggests future research directions in remote sensing-based marine plastic monitoring.

Findings

Remote sensing offers valuable data for marine debris detection.

Significant progress has been made in imaging techniques over the last decade.

Challenges include data quality, detection accuracy, and environmental variability.

Abstract

Marine plastic pollution is an emerging environmental problem since it pollutes the ocean, air and food whilst endangering the ocean wildlife via the ingestion and entanglements. During the last decade, an enormous effort has been spent on finding possible solutions to marine plastic pollution. Remote sensing imagery sits in a crucial place for these efforts since it provides informative earth observation products, and the current technology offers further essential development. Despite the advances in the last decade, there is still a way to go for marine plastic monitoring research where challenges are rarely highlighted. This paper contributes to the literature with a critical review and aims to highlight literature milestones in marine debris and suspected plastics (MD&SP) monitoring by promoting the computational imaging methodology behind these approaches along with detailed discussions on challenges and potential future research directions.