The squeaky stuffed animals are cute. But when an animal is a real young bird, its stomach creaked from all the plastic it consumes, love quickly turns into a dystopian nightmare.
However, this does not happen in a distant dystopia. Scientists at the Adrift Lab Ocean Research Group were shocked to discover the “crunchy birds” on the luxury Lord Howe Island, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. More importantly, on the first day of the island this year, researchers found a dead young bird that consumed 778 pieces of plastic, breaking the lab’s 15-year record, taking the maximum plastic intake a bird and taking it in the long term.
“This year, we decided not to say to each other that it can’t get worse,” because it’s done every year,” the researchers wrote in an Adrift Lab News press release. “Terms like ‘unprecedented’ and ‘terror’ really can’t do that. When scientists are on the frontline of the environmental/pollution/biodiversity crisis, we can almost begin to describe the testimony of what has been done to our mental and physical health for twenty years.”
The team visits the island every year to monitor the impact of plastic pollution on shear water pipes, as CNN reports, black-colored, long-winged migratory seabirds. Although the cases and volume of plastic intake are rising, this year’s field survey “silence us all.” Lavers and her colleagues believe that parents mistake plastic for food and feed it to their chicks.
A total of 778 pieces of plastic debris in birds die from 80 to 90 days old, indicating that their parents feed them about 10 pieces of plastic waste every day. According to the laboratory’s statement, the previous one was about 400 pieces.
“This bird, and many other birds in recent years, now contain such a huge amount of plastic that when our research team presses gently on their belly, we hear a shocking crunch as the plastic moves,” the researchers wrote. “We actually call them ‘crunchy birds’ because … we can give them other names.” Alex Bond, an ecologist at Adrift lab, told The Post that they can even hear it in some live birds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tet7-wg3rvc
It’s not just microplastics, scientists have found everywhere, from chewing gum to human testicles and brains. Bond report found objects as big as bottle caps and takeaway soy sauce bottles, as well as tableware, nails and countless large pieces of unknown plastic.
Not surprisingly, the ingested plastic can harm birds. During the dissection, the team found scars in the bird’s kidneys and hearts, as well as “dementia-like” brain damage to infants’ shearwaters, according to CNN. “They don’t kill the animal right away, but it does cause it to have a shorter lifespan and pain,” Lavers told CNN. Additionally, she and her colleagues have noticed that birds’ weight and wingspan have continued to decline over the years.
This spring, Australian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson traveled to Lord Howe Island with researchers. “I want every politician and every decision maker around the world because it’s a global issue and I want them to experience what I have only 24 hours of experience, can come here and do it themselves, and then they’ll get it,” he told ABC Australia. “We’re not winning the war of waste.”
Scientists often view seabirds as indicators of marine ecosystem health, hoping they understand how our oceans perform. These sentries gave us a clear warning.
