Plastic pollution has killed half a million hermit crabs, study says

By Kelsey VlamisBBC News


5th December 2019

An estimated 570,000 hermit crabs have been killed after being trapped in plastic debris, a new study has said.

The researchers said piles of plastic on beaches create physical barriers and "deadly traps" for the crabs.

The study looked at strawberry hermit crab populations on two remote tropical island locations.

The scientists say more research is needed into how plastic pollution is affecting wildlife populations worldwide, especially on land.

"The potential for plastics on beaches and in other terrestrial ecosystems to cause harm is under-acknowledged," said co-author Alex Bond, a senior curator in the department of life sciences at the Natural History Museum in London.

He says plastic in the ocean entangles and is ingested by wildlife, but on land it acts as a trap and a barrier to species going about their daily lives.

The researchers surveyed sites on the Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean and Henderson Island in the South Pacific. They say both locations are littered with millions of pieces of plastic.

They say crabs had crawled into plastic containers and were unable to get out, eventually dying. The containers had openings that allowed the crabs to enter, but were positioned with the opening facing an upward angle, so that the crabs would have difficulty crawling back out.

Continued

Mediterranean sharks risk 'disappearing': conservationists

JULY 12, 2019

Sharks—the sea's top predators for millions of years—are at risk of disappearing from the Mediterranean as overfishing and plastic pollution choke populations of the endangered hunters, conservationists warned Friday.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said that more than half of shark and ray species in the Mediterranean were under threat, and that almost a third of them have been fished to the brink of extinction.

Its report, released ahead of Shark Awareness Day, singled out Libya and Tunisia as the worst culprits, with each country's fishery hauling in about 4,200 tonnes of sharks a year—three times that of the next biggest Mediterranean fisher, Italy.

While some species are targeted for food, many of the sharks fished in the Mediterranean are bycatch caught up in nets set for other fish.

The WWF said it had recorded more than 60 shark species entangled in fishing nets across the Mediterranean.

Continued

Sydney Harbour hidden plastic pollution is killing endangered turtles and marine life – via Herp Digest

Updated 12 February 2017, By Nicole Chettle

Teenage turtles like Cliff are lucky to be rescued, because many others like him are dying after eating hidden plastic pollution in Sydney Harbour and the Hawkesbury River.

Teenage turtles like Cliff are lucky to be rescued, because many are dying after eating hidden plastic pollution in Sydney Harbour and the Hawkesbury River when they come in summer to feed on seagrass meadows.

The Taronga Wildlife Hospital is treating a juvenile turtle dubbed Clifton, because it was found at Clifton Gardens on the north shore.

Hospital manager, Libby Hall, said snorkelers discovered the turtle on December 28. It could not swim or feed because it had ingested plastic.

"He was found covered in barnacles. He had barnacles all over his eyes. All over his shell," Ms Hall said.

"He was in a very bad state. He was very, very thin and weak."

Ms Hall said only one in 1,000 green turtles survive to adulthood, and any death is significant.

It is believed Cliff is a teenage turtle, about 17 or 18 years old. Green Turtles need to reach the age of 30 before they can reproduce.

"About 80 per cent of the marine turtles that come to the hospital are affected by marine debris," Ms Hall said.

"They feed on jellyfish. And plastic bags look exactly like jellyfish. So do balloons for that matter."

Ms Hall emptied a jar of plastic that was removed from the intestine of a juvenile green turtle that died in Sydney.

It was a startling haul from a relatively small creature.

"These are the plastics … there's balloons in there as well. Recycled and hard plastics and string," she said.

"Of the 45 turtles that we get each year … the majority are affected by marine debris, either plastic or fishing line and hooks.”

Why don't the supermarkets ban the plastic bag?

Conservationists are calling for NSW to ban single-use plastic bags, which are a small but significant proportion of the 10 tonnes of plastic waste that litters the harbour and its foreshores each year.

David Thomas is the founder of a community group called Eco Divers.

A self-styled "environmental ninja", he has been scouring the waters off Manly, removing rubbish for more than 30 years.

"Seventy-five per cent of what goes in the water stays in the water," he said.

"Only about 25 per cent floats … the bulk is still underwater.”

After a half-hour dive at the western end of Manly Cove, Mr Thomas filled a mesh bag with rubbish, including balloons that had bite marks from where marine life had tried to eat it.

"This nylon balloon string is impossible to break," he said.

"So that ends up as entanglement or they swallow that and it gets tangled up in their digestive system. And basically they're either going to die or if we're lucky, get rescued.”

Mr Thomas said supermarkets should reintroduce paper bags.

"I'm calling Woolworths out — you could be the first," he said.

"Why do we need to be government-driven? Why don't we do it from the bottom up? There's certainly a lot of people who don't want plastic bags. And the environment?

"Well, we can't pay that price any longer."

The ABC contacted Coles and Woolworths for comment. Both companies said they comply with government and territory regulation.

Or should this be a national issue?

So far South Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania and the ACT have banned single-use plastic bags. Queensland will join them next year.

Ian Kiernan, the Chairman of Cleanup Australia, said a NSW ban would be a quick and effective way to reduce pollution around Sydney.

"It's up to the Government to institute that. They're avoiding it," he said.

"The environment is under incredible stress.

"It's not the harbour's fault. It's what's dropped on the land that washes into the harbour through the streams and stormwater system. That's where the problem comes from.”

Roads and Maritime Services has crews working on Sydney waters for 12 hours a day, seven days a week to clean up the rubbish — which is particularly bad after heavy rain.

Environmental officer Graham Phillis said: "All the stormwater drains just back up full of rubbish and stuff.

"When it rains it just floods the whole harbour and then we're just absolutely flat out.”

In a statement, the NSW Environment Minister's office confirmed it was looking at a national approach to reduce the impact of plastic bags.

Meanwhile the turtle Cliff is slowly gaining weight and preparing to go home.

"He's quite feisty believe it of not and he swims around the pool and he's really improved a huge amount," Ms Hall said.

The turtle's rehabilitation pool is clear and clean.

Cliff's carers are worried because they cannot guarantee he will be safe from plastic when he returns to the ocean.

Seabirds eating more plastic than ever before

New study finds that bird ingestion of plastic in U.S./Canadian North Pacific amongst highest in the world

August 2012. A new study by U.S. and Canadian scientists has found that seabirds may be eating much more plastic trash than they have in the past, and that seabirds studied off the coast of Washington State and British Columbia are ingesting plastic at rates that are "among the highest" in the world.

Northern fulmars
The report was authored by Stephanie Avery-Gomm of the University of British Columbia and five other researchers. The study was carried out in 2009 - 2010 and involved the analysis of 67 Northern Fulmars that washed up dead on the shores between Long Beach, Washington, and Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Northern Fulmars, gull-like petrels related to albatrosses and shearwaters, are particularly suitable to study when considering trends in plastic pollution because they forage almost exclusively at sea, have vast ranges and because they will forage almost anything from the surface of the water.

Worrying result
"The results are troubling. The large amount of plastic ingested by fulmars from the eastern North Pacific are approaching the high levels which have been documented previously in the historically polluted North Sea, where fulmars have been used as an indicator species of ocean health for decades. In addition, it is safe to say, based on earlier studies from the North Pacific, plastic ingestion in Northern Fulmars, and therefore plastic pollution, has increased in the North Pacific over the past forty years," said Avery-Gomm.

Plastic fills up the stomach
"The science on this issue is still being refined - there is much we don't know about the impacts of plastic ingestion on birds in general and Northern Fulmars in particular. We do know that the plastic in the stomach displaces the space for food that the birds need and that plastic can lacerate the stomach lining. Some of the birds we looked at had their gizzards completely full with plastic. We also know that plastic in the sea absorbs an astounding level of contaminants in a very short time and that these contaminants may leach out in a bird that swallows it," said Avery-Gomm.

Read on:  http://www.wildlifeextra.com/go/news/plastic-seabird.html