Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Turning back the tide of destruction
Conservationists saving our Blue Planet
Quinn is part of a British Antarctic team which has been studying the albatross for the past 40 years.
The largest bird in the sky, the adult albatross travel thousands of miles collecting fish and squid to bring back to their young. But in the past decade, their population has been in decline, and Lucy and the team have become alarmed at what the albatross parents are attempting to feed their chicks. Lucy collects what the young birds have managed to regurgitate and this has recently included plastic bags and food packaging.
One young bird died after it swallowed a plastic toothpick, which pierced its stomach.
Using GPS trackers, Lucy’s team can see where the adult birds have been hunting – and they cover vast continents. She says: “This isn’t just a problem in these remote parts, it’s happening worldwide. It’s our rubbish going into the oceans and our problem that we need to solve.”
On the east coast of America, Dr Leslie Hart is also concerned about contamination causing the mysterious deaths of young dolphins.
She and her team of scientists perform autopsies on the dolphins and the findings have left them gravely concerned.
Leslie says: “Looking at very young dolphins is always heartbreaking. We are often shocked by the high levels of toxins that we detect in these animals.”
Sir David says plastics in the sea break down into tiny particles, called micro-plastics, which are swallowed by plankton. They are eaten by bigger fish which are, in turn, eaten and it goes on until they reach the dolphins at the top of the food chain.
He says the dolphins swim in a “toxic soup”, adding: “It’s now thought that a mother’s contaminated milk could kill her calf. Industrial pollution and the discarding of plastic waste must be tackled for the sake of all life in the oceans.”
There is happier news in the Caribbean, where a one-man operation begun 20 years ago has turned into a group effort which has saved leatherback turtles from the threat of extinction.
The turtles, the largest in the world, have ancestry that stretches back 100 million years to the dinosaur age. In recent times, turtle numbers have fallen catastrophically due to hunting.
Len Peters, who lives in Trinidad, says: “I grew up in a household where the presence of turtle meat was normal. The fridge was full of it.”
But when he realised leatherbacks were on the brink of extinction, he took action.
The mothers were being killed as they arrived on beaches to lay their eggs, so he embarked on a mission to protect them. After being threatened with violence by angry locals, he came up with a plan to make the turtles a tourist attraction, using villagers as guides.
Len says: “The poachers are part of the conservation programme.” Now, instead of seeing 40 turtles on the beach at the height of the laying season, he is seeing 500. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, the fortunes of the sperm whales have been reversed.
They had been killed in vast numbers, but when the civil war ended in 2009 and fishermen were safe to take to the waters once again, there were rumoured sightings of huge pods, the likes of which had not been seen for years. Marine guide Daya searched for three years before he found them. He says: “We saw 15 go past us, then another pod and after 40 I started counting, but still they kept coming and I lost count. I estimate that there were 300 sperm whales.”
Sir David sees it as a reason to be hopeful. He says: “When sea-going nations come together, they can achieve astonishing results.”
Blue Planet II, BBC1, Sunday, 8pm
Pollution and plastic waste must be tackled for sake of ocean life DAVID ATTENBOROUGH TV NATURALIST