Even Small Amounts of Ocean Plastic Can Affect Petrel Chicks
Plastics Detected in 71% of Southern Giant Petrel Chicks Sampled
Ocean plastic pollution is accidentally on the menu for southern giant petrel chicks. Even small nibbles of it may affect their physiology during development, according to a study from the University of California, Davis, and Argentina's National Research Council (CONICET).
Lea este comunicado de prensa en español.
Southern giant petrels are not of high conservation concern globally, but they are particularly susceptible and useful sentinels for understanding how ocean plastic pollution affects wildlife.
With a range stretching from Antarctica to Chile, Argentina, Africa and Australia, these large birds frequently forage at the sea surface, where floating plastic tends to accumulate. Adults can accidentally transfer plastic they eat to their chicks when they regurgitate food.
The study, published in the journal Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, detected plastics in more than 71% of chicks. This suggests that most petrel chicks are inadvertently fed plastic by their parents.
A young petrel chick rests on Isla Gran Robredo, off the coast of Chubut Province in Patagonia, Argentina. Scientists found that petrel parents are inadvertently feeding chicks plastic foraged from the sea. (Luciana Gallo/CONICET)
To understand the effects of ingesting plastic on the chicks’ health, the researchers sampled and examined southern giant petrel chicks at two key stages of development during 2022 and 2023 in Patagonia, Argentina.
“We found that it doesn’t take a stomach full of plastic to leave a biological signal,” said corresponding author Marcela Uhart, a wildlife veterinarian with the UC Davis Weill School of Veterinary Medicine and its Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center.