{"id":894426,"date":"2026-09-16T19:32:11","date_gmt":"2026-09-16T19:32:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894426\/"},"modified":"2026-09-16T19:32:11","modified_gmt":"2026-09-16T19:32:11","slug":"these-crunchy-seabirds-are-crunchier-than-ever-before-for-a-very-grim-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/894426\/","title":{"rendered":"These ‘Crunchy’ Seabirds Are Crunchier Than Ever Before\u2014for a Very Grim Reason"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seabirds in Australia are breaking records again. Last year, researchers on Australia\u2019s Lord Howe Island found birds so stuffed with plastic<\/a> that they physically \u201ccrunched.\u201d Among these crunchy birds was a dead chick that had eaten a record-breaking 778 pieces of plastic. If you think it can\u2019t possibly get any worse, think again.<\/p>\n

In a study<\/a> published earlier this month in the journal Earth\u2019s Future, researchers from the Adrift Lab in Australia discovered a fledgling that had eaten 894 pieces of plastic\u2014a new record. The scientists analyzed plastic ingestion patterns in Australian seabirds using 16 years of data, detecting a sudden jump in bird exposure to plastic in recent years that aligns with the increasing amount of waste ending up in our oceans.<\/p>\n

Since 2023, the record for the greatest number of plastic items found in a single bird has been broken every single year.<\/p>\n

The worst-case scenario keeps getting worse <\/p>\n

\u201cIn 2012, we found a sable shearwater with 276 pieces of plastic in it. We thought this was the worst-case scenario, as a fledgling of that size couldn\u2019t survive eating any more,\u201d Alex Bond<\/a>, co-author of the study and principal curator of birds at the Natural History Museum, London, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cWe were wrong. From 2023 to 2026, the record for the most plastic ingested by these birds has been broken year after year. The plastic crisis is only getting worse, but we\u2019re acting nowhere near fast enough to try and tackle it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 894 plastic pieces found in a single bird this year weigh a total of 2.3 ounces (64.2 grams), which is over 15% of a shearwater\u2019s expected body weight. In human terms, it would be as if a 176-pound (80 kilogram) person walked around with 27 pounds (12 kg) of plastic.<\/p>\n

Why are birds eating so much plastic? According to the researchers, the problem is that bird parents think plastic waste floating in the open ocean is food, and they feed it to their young.<\/p>\n

Bond, who is also a member of the Adrift Lab, and his colleagues also found increasing proportions of bottle caps and plastic resin pellets called nurdles in the ingested plastic. They point to the need for legislation to enhance the recycling of these objects, such as attaching bottle caps to bottles (which Europe already does), as the Global Plastic Treaty talks move forward.<\/p>\n

Understanding plastic pollution <\/p>\n

Unfortunately, even if humans magically stopped producing plastic right now, the amount of waste in the planet\u2019s oceans would still continue to increase for decades. In other words, we need to better understand the impact of plastic pollution to safeguard marine wildlife. And our thoughts should be with Adrift Lab scientists, who have been pumping plastic out of the stomachs of young birds for years.<\/p>\n

\u201cTerms like \u2018unprecedented\u2019 and \u2018horrific\u2019 really don\u2019t do it justice,\u201d they wrote last year in an Adrift Lab press release<\/a>. \u201cAs scientists on the front lines of the environment\/pollution\/biodiversity crises, we can barely begin to describe what witnessing this for two decades has done to our mental and physical well being.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hard not to get depressed when reading about these things. The good news is that researchers are working on clever approaches to tackle plastic pollution, including transforming it into a carbon-eating material<\/a> and clean fuel<\/a>, and even using black fungus to turn it into edible ingredients<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seabirds in Australia are breaking records again. Last year, researchers on Australia\u2019s Lord Howe Island found birds so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":894427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[64,63,17702,3153,128],"class_list":["post-894426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-birds","tag-plastic-pollution","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=894426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/894426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/894427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=894426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=894426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=894426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}