{"id":2462,"date":"2019-05-20T19:52:04","date_gmt":"2019-05-20T09:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2462"},"modified":"2019-06-04T22:23:13","modified_gmt":"2019-06-04T12:23:13","slug":"the-ballooning-problem-of-plastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?p=2462","title":{"rendered":"The ballooning problem of plastics"},"content":{"rendered":"A growing awareness about the extent of plastic debris in the world\u2019s oceans has prompted a number of studies into its impact on marine life. Graphic images of the stomach contents of dead turtles, fish, and seabirds have all suggested marine animals regularly ingest decaying bits of plastic, with lethal consequences.\r\n\r\nA collaborative study led by former Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies and CSIRO PhD student, Lauren Roman focused on the risk to seabirds from plastic debris. Published during March in the journal Scientific Reports the results showed soft plastics, and balloons in particular, pose the greatest mortality risk for the Procellariiformes bird group, that includes petrels, shearwaters and albatross. It is also the bird group recognised as being the most threatened due to its globally declining populations.\t<!--more-->\r\n\r\nUsing methodology developed from the approach taken for turtles, cause-of-death data was collected from 1733 seabirds from 51 species, and showed marine debris ranging from one to 40 items had been ingested by 557 seabirds. As all the study birds were from squid-feeding species, and they had all ingested balloons, scientists are concerned that the similarities between squid and balloon fragments may be causing birds to select for balloons when foraging.\r\n\r\nRoman said the relationship between the type and amount of debris ingested by seabirds and their mortality remained poorly understood, and although soft plastics accounted for just five per cent of the items ingested, they were responsible for more than 40 per cent of the mortalities. She said all plastics posed a threat to seabirds but while hard plastics were less likely to kill than soft plastics, possibly due to them being the wrong shape and size to block a region in the birds\u2019 gut, they were still responsible for more than half the seabird deaths identified in the study.\r\n\r\n\u201cAmong the birds we studied the leading cause of death was blockage of the gastrointestinal tract, followed by infections or other complications caused by gastrointestinal obstructions. Balloons or balloon fragments were the marine debris most likely to cause mortality, perhaps because they can contort and squeeze into stomach cavities and get stuck, and they killed almost one in five of the seabirds that ingested them,\u201d she said.\r\n\r\nThe study showed all plastics posed a mortal threat to seabirds and, \u2018have substantial transboundary implications for estimating mortality due to marine debris ingestion and consequently managing wildlife population declines.\u2019\r\n\r\n\u201cThe evidence is clear. If we want to stop seabirds from dying from plastic ingestion, we need to reduce or remove marine debris from their environment, particularly balloons,\u201d Roman said.\r\n\r\n<strong>Anne Layton-Bennett<\/strong>\r\n\r\nReference\r\n\u2018A quantitative analysis linking seabird mortality and marine debris ingestion\u2019 is available at doi.org\/10.1038\/s41598-018-36585-9.\r\n\t\r\n\t\r\n\t \r\n\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A growing awareness about the extent of plastic debris in the world\u2019s oceans has prompted a number of studies into its impact on marine life. Graphic images of the stomach contents of dead turtles, fish, and seabirds have all suggested marine animals regularly ingest decaying bits of plastic, with lethal consequences. A collaborative study led [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[439,1924,1925,113,1922,1923,1577,1691],"class_list":["post-2462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-death","tag-marine","tag-maritime","tag-news-2","tag-plastics","tag-pollution","tag-seabirds","tag-turtles"],"rise-blocks_total_comments":0,"rise-blocks_categories":[{"term_id":5,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":5,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":402,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":5,"category_count":402,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0}],"rise-blocks_excerpt":"A growing awareness about the extent of plastic debris in the world\u2019s oceans has prompted a number of studies into its impact on marine life. Graphic images of the stomach contents of dead turtles, fish, and seabirds have all suggested marine animals regularly ingest decaying bits of plastic, with lethal consequences. A collaborative study led by former Institute of Marine..","blog_post_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","full":""},"categories_names":{"5":{"name":"News","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?cat=5"}},"tags_names":{"439":{"name":"death","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=death"},"1924":{"name":"marine","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=marine"},"1925":{"name":"maritime","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=maritime"},"113":{"name":"news","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=news-2"},"1922":{"name":"plastics","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=plastics"},"1923":{"name":"pollution","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=pollution"},"1577":{"name":"seabirds","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=seabirds"},"1691":{"name":"turtles","link":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/?tag=turtles"}},"comments_number":"0","wpmagazine_modules_lite_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","cvmm-medium":"","cvmm-medium-plus":"","cvmm-portrait":"","cvmm-medium-square":"","cvmm-large":"","cvmm-small":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2464,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2462\/revisions\/2464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theveterinarian.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}