Environment
Almost All Sea Bird Species Could Be Eating Plastic by 2050
Researchers have marked an alarming rise in birds dining on inedible garbage.
Plastic—it’s what’s for dinner, tragically, if you happen to be a hungry sea bird.
A new study in PNAS estimates nearly 90 percent of all living marine birds have eaten some type of plastic. With concentrations as thick as 580,000 pieces per square kilometer of ocean—and with global plastics manufacturing increasing exponentially—99 percent of seabird species could be ingesting the crud by 2050, say researchers at Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and elsewhere.