Plastic found in almost all gannet nests on Alderney

09/01/2019

Virtually all of the 8,000 Northern Gannet nests on Alderney are contaminated with plastic pollution, a survey has found.

This shocking statistic comes despite the fact that, as recently as 20 years ago, only small quantities of plastic were seen in the nests on the third-largest of the Channel Islands. According to the Alderney Wildlife Trust (AWT), plastic build-up in the breeding colonies is killing the birds, with some entangled gannets found hung or missing legs.

Northern Gannets are known to forage as far as 20 nautical miles in order to collect nesting materials and the plastics found in the nests generally consist of rope or line from the fishing industry. Alderney, 15 km from France and the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands, holds around 2 per cent of the entire global population of Northern Gannets.

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Every dead bird analysed by RSPB contained a ‘lunchbox full of plastic’

by Calum Ross

 June 11, 2018, 6:42 am

The study has caused some concern.

Two tonnes of plastic have been found in the stomachs of fulmar birds around the North Sea.

Helen Moncrieff, Shetland manager at RSPB Scotland, said every single dead bird they analysed as part of a study contained a “lunchbox full of plastic”.

She was speaking ahead of a summit in Oban next week on tackling marine litter, which will be hosted by Environment Secretary Roseanna Cunningham.

Scotland is home to a third of the European Union’s breeding seabirds, with the islands having traditionally hosted huge colonies.

However, concerns about the impact of plastic pollution are growing, and climate change has been blamed for a catastrophic collapse in seabird numbers.

Speaking at a fringe event at the SNP conference in Aberdeen, Ms Momcrieff said: “The mallies (fulmars), there is a long-term study going on in the north Atlantic and the North Sea particularly, with a whole lot of countries involved.

“Every month we go out and we check, do a beach bird survey, and any fulmar or mallie we find intact we take it, stick it in the freezer and then the stomach contents are analysed later on.

“What we find is there’s plastic in every single mallie’s belly.

“It’s like having a lunchbox full of plastic in your stomach. We calculated that there’s around two tonnes of plastic in fulmar bellies alone.”

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Fight to save dozens of seabirds trapped in plastic

Thomas Moore, Science Correspondent

Sky News20 October 2017

A painful death on 'plastic island'

Conservationists have mounted a rescue mission to save dozens of seabirds trapped in plastic and Sky News was given exclusive access to the operation.

The RSPB landed on Grassholm island, eight miles off the Pembrokeshire coast, to cut free young gannets from the fishing ropes and nets that adults use to build nests.

Greg Morgan, warden for the RSPB reserve, said there is so much fishing gear floating in the water around the island that the birds mistake it for the seaweed that they should be using.

He said: "We estimate there are 18 tonnes of plastic in the nests on the island.

"The chicks sit on the nest. As they turn, the plastic gets twisted around their leg and ensnares them.

"They should have flown away by now. Eventually the adults give up and they are left to starve."

We saw birds with plastic twine twisted so tight around their legs that it had cut through to the bone.

Other birds were already dead, their feet tethered to the nest by rope.

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Alarming amounts of plastic found in Mediterranean seabirds

A new study has discovered that 94 per cent of Cory’s shearwaters on the Catalan coast have ingested plastic. In the case of Yelkouan and Balearic shearwaters, the conclusion is that 70 per cent of studied birds were similarly affected. Jacob González Solís from the Department of Animal Biology and the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona (UB), headed a research group that carried out the study, published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. 

Plastic pollution is known to be a threat for marine ecosystems around the world, but it has not yet been extensively studied. Solís explained that, “this is the first assessment of plastic ingestion in Mediterranean seabirds. The Mediterranean Sea has been recognised as a singularly sensitive ecosystem because its coast is very industrialised, shipping activity is intense and it contains high density floating plastic areas.”

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