A new study by researchers at the University of Cape Town’s FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology reveals that the amount of plastic in petrels (seabirds) nesting on Inaccessible Island in the South Atlantic Ocean has remained steady since the 1980s.
The study’s findings were published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.
Petrels can serve as markers of plastic contamination at sea. Fulmars (tubenosed seabirds) that breed near more populated places, for example, have more plastic in their bodies than those that reproduce in remote Arctic regions.
Given the constant increase in global plastic production since the 1950s, researchers predicted that plastic accumulation in petrels (seabirds) would rise over time.
“Seabirds frequently consume these plastic fragments directly or in their food. Among seabirds, the highest ingested plastic loads typically are found in petrels, which can store plastics in their stomachs for weeks or months.
“Indeed, petrels were among the first organisms found to contain plastics in 1960, and since then, almost all petrel species examined have been found to contain plastic,” said PhD student Vonica Perold, who led the study.
Perold made use of samples collected since 1987 by Emeritus Professor Peter Ryan who conducted research into the matter.
Professor Ryan said: “Global plastic production increased more than four-fold over the study period, so the failure to detect an increase in the amount of plastic in petrels sampled in the same way at the same site for over 30 years is surprising. Our findings suggest that efforts to limit waste plastic entering the environment have been at least partly successful, reducing the proportion of plastic leaking into the sea over this period.”
He said that when the study began, dumping plastics at sea was still permitted, and lax regulations on plastic converters resulted in a large quantity of industrial pellets into the sea.
Since then, several projects have been launched to prevent plastic leakage and clean up plastics in the environment. For the seabirds in the South Atlantic, these efforts seem to have largely balanced out the increase in plastic production.
“Clearly there is room for even stricter controls to reduce waste plastic leakage, and in particular to reduce the amount of plastic used in single-use applications. Continued monitoring of plastic in seabirds will help to determine the efficacy of further efforts, including the UN Plastic Treaty currently being negotiated,” said Ryan.
IOL