TY - JOUR
T1 - Seabird breeding islands as sinks for marine plastic debris
AU - Grant, Megan L.
AU - Lavers, Jennifer L.
AU - Hutton, Ian
AU - Bond, Alexander L.
N1 - Funding Information:
Special thanks to Detached Cultural Organization, the Natural History Museum , BirdLife Northern New South Wales , Holsworth Wildlife Endowment , Thomas Davies Research Grant for Marine , Soil and Plant Biology, C. Noone, and L. Brice for providing funding for this project. Samples were collected with the permission of the Lord Howe Island Board (permit no. LHIB 06/16 and 07/18) under the approval of the University of Tasmania Animal Ethics Committee (permit no. A16357 and A16656) and New South Wales Department of Environment & Heritage (licence no. SL100619 and SL102382). Assistance in the field was provided by generous volunteers, particularly P. Clive and Adrift Lab team members. The authors thank the New Zealand Department of Conservation for permission to release the necropsy data collected under contract by Wildlife Management International Ltd (partially funded through a levy on the quota owners of relevant commercial fish stocks). We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback which helped improve our manuscript.
Funding Information:
Special thanks to Detached Cultural Organization, the Natural History Museum, BirdLife Northern New South Wales, Holsworth Wildlife Endowment, Thomas Davies Research Grant for Marine, Soil and Plant Biology, C. Noone, and L. Brice for providing funding for this project. Samples were collected with the permission of the Lord Howe Island Board (permit no. LHIB 06/16 and 07/18) under the approval of the University of Tasmania Animal Ethics Committee (permit no. A16357 and A16656) and New South Wales Department of Environment & Heritage (licence no. SL100619 and SL102382). Assistance in the field was provided by generous volunteers, particularly P. Clive and Adrift Lab team members. The authors thank the New Zealand Department of Conservation for permission to release the necropsy data collected under contract by Wildlife Management International Ltd (partially funded through a levy on the quota owners of relevant commercial fish stocks). We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their feedback which helped improve our manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/5/1
Y1 - 2021/5/1
N2 - Seabirds are apex predators in the marine environment and well-known ecosystem engineers, capable of changing their terrestrial habitats by introducing marine-derived nutrients via deposition of guano and other allochthonous inputs. However, with the health of the world's oceans under threat due to anthropogenic pressures such as organic, inorganic, and physical pollutants, seabirds are depositing these same pollutants wherever they come to land. Using data from 2018 to 2020, we quantify how the Flesh-footed Shearwater (Ardenna carneipes) has inadvertently introduced physical pollutants to their colonies on Lord Howe Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Tasman Sea and their largest breeding colony, through a mix of regurgitated pellet (bolus) deposition and carcasses containing plastic debris. The density of plastics within the shearwater colonies ranged between 1.32 and 3.66 pieces/m2 (mean ± SE: 2.18 ± 0.32), and a total of 688,480 (95% CI: 582,409–800,877) pieces are deposited on the island each year. Our research demonstrates that seabirds are a transfer mechanism for marine-derived plastics, reintroducing items back into the terrestrial environment, thus making seabird colonies a sink for plastic debris. This phenomenon is likely occurring in seabird colonies across the globe and will increase in severity as global plastic production and marine plastic pollution accelerates without adequate mitigation strategies. Seabirds transport significant quantities of plastic to remote island.
AB - Seabirds are apex predators in the marine environment and well-known ecosystem engineers, capable of changing their terrestrial habitats by introducing marine-derived nutrients via deposition of guano and other allochthonous inputs. However, with the health of the world's oceans under threat due to anthropogenic pressures such as organic, inorganic, and physical pollutants, seabirds are depositing these same pollutants wherever they come to land. Using data from 2018 to 2020, we quantify how the Flesh-footed Shearwater (Ardenna carneipes) has inadvertently introduced physical pollutants to their colonies on Lord Howe Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site in the Tasman Sea and their largest breeding colony, through a mix of regurgitated pellet (bolus) deposition and carcasses containing plastic debris. The density of plastics within the shearwater colonies ranged between 1.32 and 3.66 pieces/m2 (mean ± SE: 2.18 ± 0.32), and a total of 688,480 (95% CI: 582,409–800,877) pieces are deposited on the island each year. Our research demonstrates that seabirds are a transfer mechanism for marine-derived plastics, reintroducing items back into the terrestrial environment, thus making seabird colonies a sink for plastic debris. This phenomenon is likely occurring in seabird colonies across the globe and will increase in severity as global plastic production and marine plastic pollution accelerates without adequate mitigation strategies. Seabirds transport significant quantities of plastic to remote island.
KW - Ardenna
KW - Flesh-footed Shearwater
KW - Litter
KW - Pollution
KW - Vector
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101077801&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85101077801&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.116734
DO - 10.1016/j.envpol.2021.116734
M3 - Article
C2 - 33621733
AN - SCOPUS:85101077801
SN - 0269-7491
VL - 276
JO - Environmental Pollution
JF - Environmental Pollution
M1 - 116734
ER -
