Plastic in Albatross Chicks at Midway Atoll

This video was made at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. Please note that the dead birds (mostly Laysan Albatross chicks) that made up this pile of carcasses were collected over the enture the chick rearing season at Midway Atoll (about 5 months). The "town" referenced in the video, is the area of Sand Island where most of the human activity occurs, currently less than 100 people are normally living or visiting Midway at any given time.

Over 400,000 chicks are born annually at Midway, this pile of dead chicks, even though it may represent a 1000 or more individuals is relatively a very small portion of individuals that actually do not make it each season. That said the amount of plastic that is present in these carcasses is disturbing. The Fish and Wildlife Service is quite concerned about this issue as well, and currently has on-going studies looking at accumulation rates of plastic (and other) marine debris at Midway. However no study has looked directly at how many albatross chicks may be impacted directly by plastic ingestion so there are no "real" numbers known about mortality rates specifically due to plastic loads. Looking at the vast amount of plastic seen in these dead chicks it does seem to infer that plastic probably plays a role that frequently does not work to the advantage of the chick. FWS estimates that each year 5-tons of plastic debris is "land-filled" at Midway by adult Albatross ingesting it in the Pacific gyre and returning to Midway where they pass it on to their young when regurgitating food.

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Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Plastic marine debris
• plastic
• albatross
• Laysan albatross
• seabirds
• pollution
• Midway Atoll
• wildlife refuge
• ocean pollution
• plastic pollution
• marine debris
• Wayne Sentman
• Papahanaumokuakea