Between June 16 and 20, 2025, Dr. Barbara Stachurska visited the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Messina in Sicily. The study visit, organized at the invitation of Professor Carla Lucia Faraci, was funded by the Office of International Cooperation of the Polish Academy of Sciences. Its primary goal was to conduct planned experiments in a wave flume, focusing on the influence of surface waves on the transport of plastic pellets moving along a rippled seabed.

This experimental campaign was a continuation of research initiated during Professor Faraci’s earlier visit to the Institute of Hydro-Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IBW PAN) in May 2025. The experiments conducted in Messina were designed to complement those earlier studies by using the same type of plastic material in a wave flume with different dimensions and instrumentation. Among other techniques, water velocity measurements were performed using an ADV Vectrino Profiler. This collaborative research aims to advance our understanding of how plastic particles interact with the seabed under diverse hydrodynamic and morphological conditions. The extensive dataset gathered during the campaign is currently under analysis, and the results will be published shortly.