Reposted from @climate_science - A study estimates that around 90% of all #seab...
Reposted from @climate_science – A study estimates that around 90% of all #seabirds alive have eaten #plastic at least once [1]. In some cases eating plastic can kill #animals, by choking them or blocking their stomach [2,3,11]. Animals are also killed by getting trapped in plastic nets [13]. #Microplastics (bits of plastic smaller than 5mm [9]) are eaten by animals and passed up the food chain [4]. This means that animals at the top of the #foodchain may get high doses of plastic, as well as harmful organic pollutants that attach to the plastic itself [4]. This is thought to cause #infertility in animals such as #whales [14]. The full consequences of plastic on #natural and human #life are still unknown [10,12].
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Although this is a scary thought, for most marine #species there are much greater threats [8,15]. Seabirds, for example, are most in danger from invasive species [5,8]: when humans introduce species to places where they did not evolve, this can cause huge problems [6]. Rats introduced to islands where there were previously few #predators, for example, can result in all the seabird chicks being eaten, sometimes resulting in extinction of the species [5]. These species are often also affected by plastic pollution, but plastic is far less likely to kill a bird than a rat is [8]!
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The biggest threat to marine life in general is not plastic or rats though: it’s #fishing. This affects the fish being targeted, and other animals that lose their food or are caught by accident [17,8]. For example, at least 300,000 whales and #dolphins are killed accidentally by fishing boats each year [20].
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Plastic pollution is a serious problem, but at the moment there are worse threats for #wildlife [17]. In the long-term, climate change is a much larger threat [8,16,17]. Plastic has probably got so much attention because it is much more visible than other problems [12]. We should continue to fight he plastic problem, but we should also aim to make other problems, like #overfishing and #climatechange, more ‘visible’ to the public, so that we can get strong #political responses to them like we have recently had to plastic [18,19].
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