Nearly 60% of all seabird species, including albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins, have plastic in their gut, according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Australian and British scientists have assessed how widespread the threat of plastic is for the world’s seabirds, including albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins. Image credit: Brian Gratwicke / CC BY 2.0.
Based on analysis of published studies since the early 1960s, a team of scientists from the University of New South Wales, Imperial College London, and CSIRO, found that plastic is increasingly common in seabird’s stomachs.
Birds mistake the brightly colored items for food, or swallow them by accident, and this causes gut impaction, weight loss and sometimes even death.
In 1960, plastic was found in the stomachs of less than 5% of seabirds; by 2010 that figure had risen to 80%.
Based on current trends, the team predicts that plastic ingestion will affect 99% of the world’s seabird species by 2050.
The scientists also estimate that 90% of all seabirds alive today have eaten plastic of some kind. This includes bags, bottle caps, and plastic fibers from synthetic clothes, which have washed out into the ocean from urban rivers, sewers and waste deposits.
“For the first time, we have a global prediction of how wide-reaching plastic impacts may be on marine species – and the results are striking,” said Dr Chris Wilcox of CSIRO, Australia.
“We predict, using historical observations, that 90% of individual seabirds have eaten plastic. This is a huge amount and really points to the ubiquity of plastic pollution.”
Co-author Dr Denise Hardesty, also from CSIRO, added: “seabirds were excellent indicators of ecosystem health. Finding such widespread estimates of plastic in seabirds is borne out by some of the fieldwork we’ve carried out where I’ve found nearly 200 pieces of plastic in a single seabird.”
According to the study, plastics will have the greatest impact on wildlife that gather in the Southern Ocean in a band around the southern edges of Australia, South Africa and South America.
These areas are home to widely diverse species. While the infamous garbage patches in the middle of the oceans have higher densities of plastic, fewer birds live in these regions so the impact is reduced.
“We are very concerned about species such as penguins and giant albatrosses, which live in these areas,” said study co-author Dr Erik van Sebille of Imperial College London, UK.
“While the infamous garbage patches in the middle of the oceans have strikingly high densities of plastic, very few animals live here.”
“There was still the opportunity to change the impact plastic had on seabirds,” Dr Hardesty said.
“Improving waste management can reduce the threat plastic is posing to marine wildlife.”
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Chris Wilcox et al. Threat of plastic pollution to seabirds is global, pervasive, and increasing. PNAS, published online August 31, 2015; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1502108112
