Our waste doesn't disappear
In the past, scientists have put the percentage of seabirds with plastic in their diet at an astronomical 29 percent. Sadly, records were made to be broken and it looks like the
depth of plastic penetration into our ecosystem is so much worse than previously imagined.
An Australian team of scientists who have studied birds and marine debris for decades used computer models to update those figures, calculating that far more seabirds are affected, according to a new study published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"It's pretty astronomical," said study co-author Denise Hardesty, senior research scientist at the Australian federal science agency. She said the problem with plastics in the ocean is increasing as the world makes more of the stuff. "In the next 11 years we will make as much plastic as has been made since industrial plastic production began in the 1950s."
As with so many aspects of human's environmental impact, the problems aren't always obvious at first:
Hardesty's work found that the biggest problem strangely isn't where there's the most garbage, such as the infamous garbage patch in the central north Pacific Ocean. Instead it's where there's the greatest number of different species, especially in the southern hemisphere near Australia and New Zealand.
Areas around North America and Europe are better off, she said. By reducing plastic pellets, Europe is even seeing fewer of those plastic bits in one key bird, the northern fulmar, she said. Some species of albatross and shearwaters seem to be the most prone to eating plastic pieces.
What's worse is that based on this new study's modeling, Denise Hardesty predicts that 99 percent of seabirds will have plastic in their diet by 2050.