This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: For more than a decade, it was thought that the world's most plastic-polluted birds couldn't get any more contaminated by the man-made material. But then, from 2023–2026, the record was broken every single year.
These are among the results of the world's longest-running study of plastic ingestion in living wildlife, which has been taking place on Australia's Lord Howe Island. For the past 15 years, scientists at the Adrift Lab have been washing out the stomachs of young sable shearwaters and measuring the amount of plastic they find inside. The deadly diet of these birds is the result of their parents mistaking plastic waste floating in the open ocean for food, which they feed to their young when they return to shore.
In 2011, one bird was found to contain 276 pieces of plastic weighing 64.1 grams (2.3 ounces). That record stood for more than a decade until 2023, when more than 400 items were found in a shearwater fledgling. The record has been broken every year since, reaching a maximum of 894 plastic items weighing 64.2 grams (2.3 ounces).
This represents more than 15% of a shearwater's expected body weight—the equivalent of an 80-kilogram (176-pound) human being weighed down by 12 kilograms (26 pounds) of plastic. The sharp uptick in the amount of plastic being fed to these birds reflects the growing amount of waste entering the world's oceans. However, the variability of pollution and the limited research into it mean that smaller studies would have missed these changes—showing the need for more long-term studies on plastic and demonstrating the importance of sharing data digitally.
Alongside the more generic pieces of otherwise unidentifiable plastic found by the team, researchers noted that plastic resin pellets, known as nurdles, and bottle caps were increasing as a proportion of waste. They said legislation to improve the recycling of these items, such as tethering lids to bottles, will be vital to control plastic waste while talks on a Global Plastic Treaty continue. Even if a strong treaty is concluded rapidly, however, the problem of plastic will remain with us for years to come.
Levels of waste in the ocean would continue to increase until 2050 even if all plastic production ceased today, making it vital to better understand its impacts on marine wildlife around the world. The work is published in the journal Earth's Future. Alex Bond, principal curator of birds at the Natural History Museum and a co-author of the study, says, "In 2012, we found a sable shearwater with 276 pieces of plastic in it.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
