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Data

Surface plastic particles across the world's oceans

About this data

Source
Eriksen et al. (2014) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
January 1, 2018
Date range
2013–2013
Unit
particles

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Eriksen et al. – Plastic pollution in the world's oceans: more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea

Estimates by Eriksen et al. (2014) on the number of plastic particles of surface ocean debris floating at sea, differentiated by ocean basin and particle size.

Particle size categories range from small microplastics to macroplastics.

Estimates are based on results from 24 expeditions (over the period 2007–2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows (N = 680) and visual survey transects of large plastic debris (N = 891). These field-based results were combined with oceanographic modelling of floating debris dispersal and wind-driven vertical mixing to derive total oceanic figures.

Retrieved on
January 1, 2018
Retrieved from
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Eriksen, M., Lebreton, L. C., Carson, H. S., Thiel, M., Moore, C. J., Borerro, J. C., ... and Reisser, J. (2014). Plastic pollution in the world's oceans: more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea. PloS one, 9(12), e111913.

Estimates by Eriksen et al. (2014) on the number of plastic particles of surface ocean debris floating at sea, differentiated by ocean basin and particle size.

Particle size categories range from small microplastics to macroplastics.

Estimates are based on results from 24 expeditions (over the period 2007–2013) across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows (N = 680) and visual survey transects of large plastic debris (N = 891). These field-based results were combined with oceanographic modelling of floating debris dispersal and wind-driven vertical mixing to derive total oceanic figures.

Retrieved on
January 1, 2018
Retrieved from
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0111913
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Eriksen, M., Lebreton, L. C., Carson, H. S., Thiel, M., Moore, C. J., Borerro, J. C., ... and Reisser, J. (2014). Plastic pollution in the world's oceans: more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea. PloS one, 9(12), e111913.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Surface plastic particles across the world's oceans”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from Eriksen et al.. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

Eriksen et al. (2014) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

Eriksen et al. (2014) – processed by Our World in Data. “Surface plastic particles across the world's oceans” [dataset]. Eriksen et al., “Plastic pollution in the world's oceans: more than 5 trillion plastic pieces weighing over 250,000 tons afloat at sea” [original data]. Retrieved May 13, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

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Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/surface-plastic-particles-by-ocean.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear