Pleas to reduce plastics
Waste found on beaches at home and abroad, cause of injury or death in 267 species of animals
Visitors to the National Theatre in London have passed an odd site as of late: a sculpture including a seagull violently puking up bits of plastics.
The multi-figure piece, titled “Plasticide,” is by artist Jason deCaires Taylor.
It is meant to draw attention to the amount of plastics found along coastlines and in the oceans, from plastic bags and bottles, to broken, hard plastics and microplastics.
“Through Plasticide I want to bring this message back to home: our oceans, and the marine life which inhabits them, literally can’t stomach any more plastic,” Taylor said in a statement on the work. It was produced in partnership with Greenpeace.
“Plastic debris has been identified as the cause of injury or death in 267 different species, including 86 per cent of all species of sea turtles, 44 per cent of all seabirds and 43 per cent of all marine mammals,” science journalist Susan Freinkel wrote in her 2011 book “Plastic: A Toxic Love Story.”
“Researchers have found animals ingesting plastic from one end of the globe to the other, ranging from fulmars, seabirds that scavenge the Arctic waters of the North Sea, to southern fur seals, which inhabit islands near Antarctica.”
The puking seagull? In 2015, a disturbing trend emerged in a study led by Chris Wilcox, a research scientist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. His team looked at studies worldwide.
“Projecting patterns in the literature forward … we predict that plastic will be found in the digestive tracts of 99 per cent of all seabird species by 2050 and that 95 per cent of the individuals within these species will have ingested plastic by the same year,” stated the paper. “Threat of plastic pollution to seabirds is global, pervasive, and increasing.”
Wilcox placed a rise in plastic ingestion in seabirds alongside increased plastic production, dating back to the 1950s.
Understanding the end result
More research is needed to determine exactly what encountering and consuming more plastics means for different local species.
Memorial University of Newfoundland biologist and seabird expert Bill Montevecchi told The Telegram he isn’t aware of die-offs of seabirds in Newfoundland as a result of plastic ingestion, but it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be concern.
When you scan the nests at Cape St. Mary’s, Montevecchi said in an emailed response to questions, you’re bound to come across pieces of fish netting, synthetic rope and plastics, such as the yokes for six-pack drinks.
“The gannets collect the material at sea and return it to their colonies and build it into their nests. On rare occasions chicks or adults get entangled at the nest and die a rather agonizing death,” he said.
Chelsea George is a volunteer helping to promote a ban on single-use plastic bags in Newfoundland and Labrador. She pointed to the work of Max Liboiron, a researcher and assistant professor in the department of sociology at MUN.
Among other things, Liboiron led an investigation into the ingestion of microplastics by codfish around the Northeast Avalon. Of 205 cod destined for the plate, five fish had eaten plastic. It’s a relatively low rate, yet for George, there’s no ignoring the five.
“Plastic is terrible. It just doesn’t decompose and we’re in one of the windiest provinces, we’re an island and it’s blowing into the Atlantic Ocean,” she said.
Plastics go beyond single-use bags. But, she said, dealing with the bags would be a start.
“You’ve got to get to the root of the problem. Because it’s just going to keep coming, as much as we clean it up,” she said.
From here to there
Martin Gray lives on the west side of Orkney, Scotland, a collection of islands off the country’s northeast coast. He maintains a page for his “Orkney Beachcombing” on Facebook, and knows about cleaning up plastics.
Gray said he is troubled by the sheer amount he finds along his local beaches originating from North America, including Newfoundland and Labrador.
In a recent interview with CBC, he highlighted a story he was told of found shells from shotgun and rifle ammunition.
“It’s from your seabird harvest, the turrs that get harvested over there. The cartridges end up in the water and the current brings them here,” he said.
Gray is confident in the origin, given the plastics were said to be backtracked to their source, through a joint investigation involving Scotland Yard, the FBI and the RCMP.
Yet he has also found a water bottle with an Academy Canada logo and a Scotsburn dairy milk crate, plus more generic plastics. “Everything from little Coke bottles up to great big buoys, pipes, tanks — it’s a lot. It’s not a trivial issue,” he said, noting how the ocean currents will carry plastics from here to there.
“The beaches here (in Scotland) that I monitor and clean … sometimes it feels as if you have the entire garbage of the North Atlantic bearing down on them,” he said.
Since plastics can go astray by accident, Gray asked Atlantic Canadians to encourage less use of throwaway plastics. He suggests individuals using their power as consumers — for example, avoiding products with excessive packaging.