The ‘Marine Plastics’ project aims to draw up an approach to monitoring of marine microplastics. In compliance with the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, microplastics have to be monitored in the water column and sediments of the Belgian part of the North Sea. Different approaches are evaluated to establish monitoring procedures for sampling, separation and identification of microplastics. The project is executed in collaboration with ILVO, focusing on microplastics in seafood as well as macro litter collected with beam trawls. At the end of the project, a first integrated dataset on microplastics in the different compartments of the Belgian marine ecosystem will be made available.