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The main aim of the research was to analyse the variability of the beach litter items, both in terms of categories and top items collected on the southern Baltic coast, based on a 5-year series of data. Research on beach litter collected in 15 sections with a length of 1 km in four seasons has shown that the dominant is artificial polymer materials with the percentage share of 68.5%. The proportions of other categories were at the levels of 10% in the case of processed/worked wood, 8% - metal, 4% - glass/ceramics and paper/cardboard, 2% - cloths/textiles and 1% - rubber. Unidentified items constituted about 3%. 53% of the top 10 litter types were cigarette butts and filters. Linking the litter types with their potential sources allowed for the identification of tourism and recreational activities as the main source with the percentage from 58.1% to 71.6%. There is no clear link between the number of tourists and the amount of litter, mainly due to the beach clean-up companies coordinated by local authorities. A comparison of urban and rural areas showed differences in the total beach litter number, while the percentage share of individual categories and litter sources was similar. The marine environment's status in terms of beach litter was assessed based on national and EU threshold values. The assessment based on the national threshold values indicates the poor environmental conditions along the southern Baltic coast, regarding both total number litter items per 100 m and artificial polymer materials. In the case of assessments based on the EU threshold value set - for the total number of litter per 100 m the environmental status of the southern Baltic coast was considered good throughout the entire study period.

The Rodent Sperm Analysis method was devised some two decades ago to advance ecological assessment science for mammals, one of two groups of terrestrial receptors routinely evaluated at chemically contaminated sites. In part, this method recognizes that sufficient time has elapsed at sites, such that a need to anticipate or predict impacts to ecological receptors is an obsolete task. The method therefore, recommends evaluating the very receptors that occupy sites for evidence today of their displaying compromised reproduction, a toxicological endpoint of great concern within the regulatory community. Critically, Rodent Sperm Analysis is not a risk assessment method but rather a direct health status assessment method, a distinction that ecological risk assessors may fail to recognize or appreciate. Further, the method is not intended as a replacement for the conventional approach to ecological assessment, but rather a method to be run in tandem with it, where it may likely reveal that site mammals are commonly free of impacts and that conventional assessments are fully unnecessary. This Discussion paper is a cautious analytical review of ecological assessor perceptions about the vetted and recently ASTM International certified Rodent Sperm Analysis method. The review identifies potential impediments to the method gaining broader acceptance by professionals in the field, prominently among these, resistance to adopting a new ecological assessment paradigm that may be more helpful than the one presently in place.

A battery of cell and tissue-level biomarkers was applied in mussels of 6 size-classes collected from Galicia and the Basque coast in summer 2007 in an attempt to examine the health status of individuals affected as adults (mature before 2003), affected during their developmental or juvenile stages (2003–2004 offspring), or not directly affected by the Prestige oil spill (POS) exposure (presumably 2005–2006 offspring). This battery of biomarkers was akin to those formerly applied on mussels of 3.5–4.5 cm shell length for which there exist biomarker reference values in the studied geographical areas. The cause–effect relationship between biological responses and the different history of exposure to POS fuel oil was intricate for different reasons: (a) growth rate was dissimilar in mussels of the two studied localities and much lower than expected, (b) a chronological basis could not be directly associated to POS events (all mussels except the smallest from Galicia had been subjected to the direct POS impact at one or another stage of their life-cycle); and (c) some biomarkers and histopathology seemingly depended on size/age irrespectively of the locality and the POS chronology. As a whole, the present study gives a very useful set of reference values of biomarkers obtained for Mytilus galloprovincialis of different size-classes. Finally, it is recommended that Mussel Watch programmes should be designed by standardising the age of the sentinel mussels rather than their size, especially if the programme covers large or diverse geographical areas, if long-term trends are relevant or if significant pollution effects on growth are expected.