5 January 2005
DISCARDED plastic has become a potentially dangerous staple in the diet of seabirds.
The stomachs of 95 per cent of all fulmars that researchers found washed up dead around the North Sea contained fragments of plastic. One dead bird from Denmark had 20.6 grams of plastic in its belly, equivalent to about 2 kilograms in a human-sized stomach.
Fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) like to feed on fish and offal discarded by trawlers. Any floating debris they accidentally ingest is retained in their stomachs, and this turns them into “flying dustbins”, says Jan van Franeker, the Dutch marine biologist who led the research.
“One dead bird from Denmark had a quantity of plastic equivalent to 2 kilograms in a human-sized stomach”
Over the past two years, his team at the Alterra marine laboratory on the Dutch island of Texel has analysed 560 fulmars from eight countries. The birds’ stomachs ...