Nearly Every Seabird on Earth Is Eating Plastic
Plastic trash is found in 90 percent of seabirds. The rate is growing steadily as global production of plastics increases.
So much plastic trash is flowing into the oceans that 90 percent of seabirds eat it now and virtually every one will be consuming it by 2050. That finding, revealed in a new study published this week, tracks for the first time how widespread plastics have become inside seabirds around the world.
“That was shocking,” says Chris Wilcox, a research scientist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization and lead author of the study. “Essentially, the number of species and number of individuals within species that you find plastic in is going up fairly rapidly by a couple percent every year.”
Scientists have been tracking plastic ingestion by seabirds for decades. In 1960, plastic was found in the stomachs
