Plastic is strangling our sea life
● A colony of endangered Cape cormorants at Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront have made their nests out of plastic and discarded fishing gear.
The nests against the quayside are near a restaurant, invisible to pedestrians but easily seen from the water. They are made of flotsam and one nest features a phone charger.
The nests are being watched by V&A marine wildlife monitors and a scientist who is conducting research on cormorant acoustics. They say the roosts indicate the dire state of the world’s oceans and pose a health risk to the birds. The plastic can entangle or choke them.
“This just raises awareness about the impact humans are having on the marine environment,” said Sea Search marine scientist Dr Tess Gridley, a senior lecturer at Stellenbosch University who is collaborating on a study of cormorant vocal behaviour.
“It’s obviously not just cormorants, it is across the board with different birds.”
Cable ties and old fishing rope appear to be popular nest linings, said Gridley, who has also documented plastic entanglements of Cape fur seals.
She and her team have often been confronted by the effect of plastic pollution. “We’re seeing it because we’re going out there into the marine environment and seeing what is really going on.”
Last year the marine wildlife management programme at the Two Oceans Aquarium education foundation, based at V&A, rescued 42 seals from plastic entanglement and responded to 178 wildlife rescue callouts.
The Waterfront monitors watch the harbour’s other marine residents. These include a large number of seals that often bask on specially installed seal platforms.
Large sunfish, dolphins and even humpback whales have been known to swim into the harbour precinct. Earlier this year a massive shoal of horse mackerel became stranded in the V&A’s marina.
The aquarium has a unit for rescued sea turtles that are especially vulnerable to ingesting microplastics that are mistaken for floating sea grass. Last year 37 hatchlings and 10 sub-adults were rescued.
The aquarium’s animal welfare expert, Claire Taylor, said marine life was increasingly affected by plastic pollution. Her team is working with the V&A to tackle it.
“The aim is to stop it happening rather than just being reactive,” she said.
V&A spokesperson Donald Kau said: “We’ve committed ourselves to the elimination of single-use plastics, recognising that our seas and waterways are an important part of our operation.
“The effort is precinct-wide, working with our tenants, educating our visitors and drawing in experts to ensure that we continue to safeguard our oceans and marine life especially against plastic waste.”
SA is the 11th-worst plastic polluter in the world, according to a recent World Wide Fund for Nature report.