Have you heard the news about the poor sea turtle got plastic straw stuck up his nose? This incident also happens to other animals like seabirds.
The recent study titled "Threat Of Plastic Pollution To Seabirds Is Global, Pervasive, And Increasing" foretells that 99% of the world's seabird species would affect by plastic ingestion in 2050.
The study was led by Dr. Chris Wilcox with co-authors Dr. Denise Hardesty and Dr. Erik van Sebille of Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), an Australian Government corporate entity and Imperial College London. The study was published in PNAS journal has discovered that 60% of all seabird species have plastic in their gut.
"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," Wilcox says. He is a senior research scientist at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere.
By using historical observations, researchers has predicted that 90% of individual seabirds have eaten plastic. Very alarming percentage and could blame to plastic pollution.
Plastics consumed by seabirds include materials washed out into the ocean like plastic fibres from synthetic clothes, bottle caps and bags.
Waste Management
Another researcher sees hope by suggesting to improve the waste management, which can definitely reduce the threat of plastic to marine wildlife.
"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," Dr. Hardesty said of CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere.
Seabirds were excellent indicators of ecosystem health, she added.
Devastating Impact
Plastics had the most devastating impact in the areas where there was the greatest diversity of species, according to Dr. van Sebille, from the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.
Sebille added that they are very concerned about the other species like penguins and giant albatrosses.
The researchers found plastics will have the greatest impact on wildlife where they gather in the Southern Ocean, in a band around the southern edges of Australia, South Africa and South America, cited in a statement released by CSIRO.
"While the infamous garbage patches in the middle of the oceans have strikingly high densities of plastic, very few animals live here," Sebille says.
