Why Do Seabirds Eat Plastic?

The Shiants, remote, cliff-edged islands off the coast of Scotland, are home to 350,000 seabirds, including great auks, puffins, and razorbills. This is the starting point for National Geographic contributor Adam Nicolson’s new book, The Seabird’s Cry.
Celebrating 10 species in detail, he describes the incredible resilience of seabirds and the many adaptations that have enabled them to survive and navigate the oceans, while sounding a clarion call for their conservation amid dramatically falling numbers.

If you leave plastic floating in the sea for over three months, it starts to release plumes of DMS.
The huge amounts of plastic found in seabirds’ stomachs is because they are mistaking this plastic for food. It clogs their guts, and makes them unable to get enough real food into their stomachs. Greenpeace estimates that eight million tons of plastic a year are going into the ocean.

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