Plastic pollution record broken four years running in Lord Howe Island seabirds
A 15-year study of seabirds on Australia’s Lord Howe Island has found a sharp recent increase in the amount of plastic being swallowed by young sable shearwaters, with the record amount broken every year from 2023 to 2026.
Researchers from Adrift Lab have been studying the birds since 2011 by examining the stomach contents of fledglings and recording the quantity and weight of plastic they have ingested. The long-running dataset has revealed changes that shorter studies could easily miss.
In 2011, one sable shearwater was found to have 276 pieces of plastic weighing 64.1 grams inside it. That remained the recorded maximum for more than a decade. The figure was surpassed in 2023, when more than 400 pieces were recovered from a single fledgling. The record then increased each year, eventually reaching 894 pieces weighing 64.2 grams.
At that level, plastic accounted for more than 15% of the bird’s expected body weight. For an 80-kilogram person, the equivalent load would be around 12 kilograms of plastic.
The birds are not deliberately eating plastic. Their parents can mistake floating waste for food while foraging at sea before carrying it back to their chicks. Researchers found that, alongside unidentified plastic fragments, items such as bottle caps and industrial plastic resin pellets, known as nurdles, were becoming a larger part of what the birds consumed.
The researchers say the findings underline the value of long-term monitoring and sharing environmental data digitally, particularly because plastic pollution can vary considerably over time and between locations.
Dr Alex Bond, Principal Curator of Birds at the Natural History Museum and a co-author of the study, said the researchers had initially believed the 2011 record represented the worst-case scenario for a bird of that size. The subsequent records showed otherwise.
The research also points to the persistence of the wider plastic problem. Even if global plastic production stopped immediately, ocean waste would continue to rise for years as existing material remains in circulation and reaches marine environments.
The study into the Lord Howe Island seabirds, Abrupt recent increases in plastic ingestion by Sable Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes), was published in Earth’s Future by researchers from the Adrift Lab and collaborating institutions.
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