Size of marine debris items ingested and retained by petrels

Lauren Roman; Harriet Paterson; Kathy A Townsend; Chris Wilcox; Britta Denise Hardesty; Mark A Hindell

doi:10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.04.021

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Size of marine debris items ingested and retained by petrels

Journal article

Peer reviewed

Size of marine debris items ingested and retained by petrels

Lauren Roman, Harriet Paterson, Kathy A Townsend, Chris Wilcox, Britta Denise Hardesty and Mark A Hindell

Marine Pollution Bulletin, Vol.142, pp.569-575

2019

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.04.021

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Abstract

diet

plastic ingestion

pollution

shearwater

seabird

procellariiform

Pollution of the world's oceans by marine debris has direct consequences for wildlife, with fragments of plastic <10 mm the most abundant buoyant litter in the ocean. Seabirds are susceptible to debris ingestion, commonly mistaking floating plastics for food. Studies have shown that half of petrel species regularly ingest anthropogenic waste. Despite the regularity of debris ingestion, no studies to date have quantified the dimensions of debris items ingested across petrel species ranging in size. We excised and measured 1694 rigid anthropogenic debris items from 348 petrel carcasses of 20 species. We found that although the size of items ingested by petrels scale positively with the size of the bird, 90% of all debris items ingested across species fall within a narrow "danger zone" range of 2-10 mm, overlapping with the most abundant oceanic debris size. We conclude that this globally profuse size range of marine plastics is an ingestion hazard to petrels.

Details

Title: Size of marine debris items ingested and retained by petrels
Authors: Lauren Roman (Author) - University of Tasmania
Harriet Paterson (Author) - University of Western Australia
Kathy A Townsend (Author) - University of the Sunshine Coast - School of Science & Engineering
Chris Wilcox (Author) - CSIRO
Britta Denise Hardesty (Author) - CSIRO
Mark A Hindell (Author) - University of Tasmania
Publication details: Marine Pollution Bulletin, Vol.142, pp.569-575
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.
Date published: 2019
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2019.04.021
ISSN: 0025-326X
Organisation Unit: School of Science and Engineering - Legacy; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 99450792002621
Output Type: Journal article

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Collaboration types: Domestic collaboration
Web Of Science research areas: Environmental Sciences; Marine & Freshwater Biology

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