(CNN) A significant drop in the number of plastic bags littering Britain's seabeds suggests that a charge on plastic bags and other efforts to tackle marine litter are working, according to a new report.

The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, was carried out by scientists at the UK government's Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), who analyzed data complied between 1992 and 2017 to reveal a drop of nearly 30% in plastic bags on Britain's seabeds.

The report inspected 2,461 trawls off the UK's coasts and found that over the 25-year period, 63% of trawls contained at least one plastic litter item.

While the prevalence of plastic shopping bags has decreased, there was an increase in other plastic items including fishing debris and plastic sheets.

"We observed sharp declines in the percentage of plastic bags as captured by fishing nets trawling the seafloor around the UK compared to 2010," Thomas Maes, marine litter scientist at Cefas, said in a statement.

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