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Currently more than seven million tons of plastic trash end up in the ocean, often a result of improper dumping into rivers that wash into the sea. Global plastic production has doubled every 11 years since the 1950s and currently tops 300 million tons per year. The study’s authors suggest stricter regulations on plastic production, consumption and disposal, as well as the development of plastics that degrade in seawater. “It’s an indicator that our world is literally getting clogged by plastic,” he said. Instead, most seabirds are ingesting plastic at hotspots that stretch from Australia and New Zealand to South Africa and Chile.īoris Worm, a marine biologist from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia who was not involved in the research, said that seabird deaths are the most visible sign of a larger threat that plastics pose to marine wildlife like fish, whales and sea turtles. Researchers had previously thought that giant garbage patches swirling between Hawaii and California were the most likely places where birds would eat the waste. And they predict that 99 percent of all seabirds will swallow plastic in 2050.įor Erik Van Sebille, an oceanographer at Imperial College London and co-author of the paper, the most surprising findings from their analysis were the locations where seabirds were most likely to ingest plastic.

They estimated that today that number has increased to about 90 percent of seabirds.

The team found that fewer than 10 percent of seabirds had traces of plastic in their stomachs during the 1970s and 1980s. Researchers from Australia and Britain analyzed a number of papers from 1962 to 2012 that had surveyed 135 seabirds. The number of incidents like these is rapidly increasing, according to the new study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their exposed innards revealed lighters, bottle caps and toothbrushes mistakenly fed to them by their parents. The problem received some national attention in 2013 with the documentary “Midway,” which showed a remote island in the Pacific covered in corpses of baby albatross. Seabirds like albatross, petrels and penguins face a growing threat from plastic waste in parts of the Pacific, Atlantic, Indian and Southern Oceans, according to a new study published on Monday.īrightly colored floating bits – debris that includes items such as discarded flip-flops, water bottles and popped balloons – often attract seabirds, which confuse them for food like krill or shrimp. We welcome your feedback about Summer of Science and our coverage more broadly at MURPHY You can find more fascinating New York Times science stories, year round, here as well as on our Facebook page and our Twitter feed. is misleading about 18 percent of the time. The first flower did not appear on Earth until after the dinosaurs had arrived.ī.M.I. The United States looks like a checkerboard from above because of Thomas Jefferson. There is a type of shark that is small enough to hold in your hand. Some elephants respond to the rumba, but not the tango. It’s possible to run a computer on water droplets.Ī leap second means 80 extra wing flaps for a hummingbird. The New Horizons spacecraft was going so fast that it passed the moon in just nine hours. Thanks for joining us this summer as we wandered into the deep sea, visited Pluto, barbecued steak on lava, read the world’s oldest message in a bottle and took the first bite of space salad.Īlong with exploring why sometimes the big toe is not the biggest, we learned that: Long-term records of sightings help researchers learn more about whales’ fidelity to particular habitats, migratory patterns, female reproductive rates and the behavioral roles that the whales adopt. He was observed again in 2006, defending his position next to a lone female from other competing males. In 1990, Old Timer was spotted off the coast of Hawaii escorting a mother-calf pair. It lifted its tail flukes, and we saw the underside.” The whale was immediately recognizable, he said: “Some of these whales have such distinct patterns. “It’s really a celebration of whales since humans largely have stopped hunting them,” said Adam Pack, a biologist at the University of Hawaii and one of the researchers who identified Old Timer. He is believed to be at least 50 years old now. The whale, whom the researchers named Old Timer, was first seen in Lynn Canal in southeast Alaska 44 years ago by Charles Jurasz, a pioneer in whale research. It was no ordinary sighting, and the scientists were ecstatic: They say the observation is only the most recent in the longest string of sightings of any humpback in the world. On July 12, researchers aboard a ship called the Northern Song spotted a humpback whale lunge feeding and enjoying some krill in Frederick Sound, Alaska.

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