How the relentless plastic tide is taking its terrible toll on wildlife of the Arctic
WE think of the Arctic as a pristine wilderness still untouched by human hand. These shocking images dispel that myth in brutal fashion.
One shows a reindeer who died after becoming tangled in a plastic fishing net – just one piece of masses of plastic waste found in the Arctic.
The velvet covering its antlers was ripped away during the creature’s desperate struggle to free itself, and its corpse is left bloodied by its ultimately futile efforts.
Other heart-rending pictures show Arctic terns, polar bears and seals ensnared in plastic nets and ropes.
The photos, released by the Norwegian Polar Institute, are stark reminder that it is not just turtles and fish that can die from man littering the planet with plastic.
Geir Wing Gabrielsen, who co-wrote a report on the high levels of microplastics in sea ice, told BBC News: ‘We are finding more and more plastic waste in Svalbard. The northern fulmar breeds in Svalbard. At the end of the 1970s we found very few [pieces of] plastic in their stomachs.
‘In 2013 when we last investigated, some had more than 200 pieces of plastic in their stomachs. Other creatures are getting entangled in nets washed up on beaches – like reindeer.
‘Some die because they can’t release their antlers – we find them every year.’
Tens of thousands of discarded fishing nets have been found in the Norwegian Arctic during beach clean-ups. Fishing nets are a big source of plastic pollution on the Arctic island of Svalbard, with an estimated 80 per cent of plastic rubbish coming from fishing.
The ropes often get shredded into finer and finer strands, meaning they can be easily swallowed by animals.
However, there is also other rubbish of all kinds from all over the world. Researchers found a plastic butter tub from Spain, a yellow strip of plastic from the US, a plastic container from the Azores and plastic buoys from the Florida Keys and Canada.
The revelations come as the Daily Mail campaigns to end the tide of plastic polluting our land and seas. Bo Eide, an environment consultant for Tromsø Council in the Arctic Circle, conducts litterpicking on the beaches. He collected 30 tonnes of litter – much of it plastic – from the shores of Svalbard last year alone.
‘People see the pictures in brochures of the pristine Arctic and they book their holidays to come here,’ he said.
‘They’re sometimes rather shocked to find that the Arctic in close-up is no longer how it looks in the brochures.’
As well as fears for Svalbard’s 10,000-strong reindeer population, fishermen also worry about the effect of the pollution on their catches. Jan Roger Lerbukt, manager of Hermes Fishing in Tromsø, said: ‘Fishing has been in our soul for thousands of years. If there’s any environmental threat to the fish it’s also a threat to our livelihood and that’s a big concern.
‘We have a reputation for a pure product and we don’t want that damaged.’
He said that trawler crews used to throw tangled nets overboard, but they now they return them to harbour. They also salvage plastic litter they catch, under a scheme called Fishing for Litter.
Norway’s environment minister Ola Elvestuen said: ‘It’s disturbing – there’s nowhere on Earth that’s so far away that it’s not affected by plastics. This should be a call for action. It’s been known about for years, but the magnitude of it hasn’t been taken in as it should have been. We must stop the plastic pollution.’
‘We find their bodies every year’