This visualization product displays smoking related items abundance per beach per year obtained during UNEP-MARLIN monitoring surveys due to the differences in the sampling of this protocol. A separate map has been produced for the other protocols.

EMODnet Chemistry included the gathering of marine litter in its 3rd phase. Since the beginning of 2018, data of beach litter have been gathered and processed in the EMODnet Chemistry Marine Litter Database (MLDB). The harmonization of all the data has been the most challenging task considering the heterogeneity of the data sources, sampling protocols and reference lists used on a European scale. Preliminary processing were necessary to harmonize all the data : - Exclusion of OSPAR 1000 protocol, - Separation of monitoring surveys from research & cleaning operations - Exclusion of beaches with no coordinates - Normalization of survey lengths and survey numbers per year - Some categories & some litter types have been removed

Abundances have been calculated on each beach and year using the following computation: Cigarette related items abundance=(∑number of cigarette related items (normalized at 100m))/(Number of surveys on the year)

Percentiles 50, 75 & 95 have been calculated taking into account data from all years.

Cigarette related items reference codes taken into account for this product and information on data processing and calculation are detailed in the document attached p15.