Dead seabird found with almost 900 pieces of plastic waste in its body

A seabird had 894 pieces of plastic inside its body when it died, making up around 15% of its body weight.

The shocking discovery was made by researchers studying wildlife on Australia’s Lord Howe Island. Their 15 year investigation has revealed an alarming rise in the amount of plastic being swallowed by seabirds.

The creatures are exposed to the waste when their parents mistake plastic floating in the ocean for food and carry it back to their chicks.

In 2011, researchers found 276 pieces of plastic inside a single bird. That record stood for more than a decade before being broken in 2023, when more than 400 pieces were recovered from a shearwater fledgling.

Since then the record has been broken each year. The latest discovery involved a dead sable shearwater, who had 894 pieces weighing 64.2g inside its body.

For an 80kg person, that would be the equivalent of swallowing around 12kg of plastic.

Dr Alex Bond, Principal Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum and a co-author of the study, says: ‘In 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’t survive eating any more.’

‘We 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’re acting nowhere near fast enough to try and tackle it.’

Researchers say the increase reflects the growing quantity of plastic entering the world’s oceans.

However, they warn that fluctuations in pollution levels and the limited amount of long-term research mean shorter studies could fail to detect such changes.

The findings, they say, highlight the need for continued long-term monitoring of plastic pollution and for research data to be shared digitally so that changes can be tracked over time.

In addition to unidentified pieces of plastic, researchers recorded an increase in the proportion of resin pellets, known as nurdles, and bottle caps found inside the birds.

They said measures designed to reduce plastic waste, including legislation requiring bottle caps to remain attached to containers, would be important in tackling the problem as negotiations continue over a proposed Global Plastics Treaty.

However, even a rapid agreement on a strong international treaty would not immediately reverse the effects of existing pollution.

Researchers say plastic waste already present in the oceans would continue to increase until 2050 even if production of new plastic stopped today, underlining the need to understand its effects on marine wildlife.