A quantitative analysis linking sea turtle mortality and plastic debris ingestion

Chris Wilcox; Melody Puckridge; Qamar Schuyler; Kathy A Townsend; Britta Denise Hardesty

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-30038-z

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A quantitative analysis linking sea turtle mortality and plastic debris ingestion

Journal article

Open access

Peer reviewed

A quantitative analysis linking sea turtle mortality and plastic debris ingestion

Chris Wilcox, Melody Puckridge, Qamar Schuyler, Kathy A Townsend and Britta Denise Hardesty

Scientific Reports, Vol.8, 12536 (2018)

2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-30038-z

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Abstract

Plastic in the marine environment is a growing environmental issue. Sea turtles are at significant risk of ingesting plastic debris at all stages of their lifecycle with potentially lethal consequences. We tested the relationship between the amount of plastic a turtle has ingested and the likelihood of death, treating animals that died of known causes unrelated to plastic ingestion as a statistical control group. We utilized two datasets; one based on necropsies of 246 sea turtles and a second using 706 records extracted from a national strandings database. Animals dying of known causes unrelated to plastic ingestion had less plastic in their gut than those that died of either indeterminate causes or due to plastic ingestion directly (e.g. via gut impaction and perforation). We found a 50% probability of mortality once an animal had 14 pieces of plastic in its gut. Our results provide the critical link between recent estimates of plastic ingestion and the population effects of this environmental threat.

Details

Title: A quantitative analysis linking sea turtle mortality and plastic debris ingestion
Authors: Chris Wilcox (Author) - CSIRO
Melody Puckridge (Author) - CSIRO
Qamar Schuyler (Author) - CSIRO
Kathy A Townsend (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - Faculty of Science, Health, Education and Engineering
Britta Denise Hardesty (Author) - CSIRO
Publication details: Scientific Reports, Vol.8, 12536 (2018); 11
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2018
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-30038-z
ISSN: 2045-2322
Copyright note: Copyright © 2018 The authors. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Organisation Unit: School of Science and Engineering - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99451122902621
Output Type: Journal article

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