Low incidence of plastics in food loads delivered to nestlings by a zooplanktivorous seabird over a 21-year period.

Autor: Hipfner JM; Wildlife Research Division, Environment and Climate Change Canada, RR#1 5421 Robertson Road, Delta, BC V4K 3N2, Canada. Electronic address: mark.hipfner@canada.ca., Studholme KR; Department of Biology, Dalhousie University, 1355 Oxford Street, Halifax, NS B3H 4R2, Canada., Galbraith M; Institute of Ocean Sciences, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, 9860 West Saanich Road, Sidney, BC V8L 4B2, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Marine pollution bulletin [Mar Pollut Bull] 2017 Aug 15; Vol. 121 (1-2), pp. 320-322.
DOI: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.06.028
Abstrakt: We quantified the amount of plastic found in food loads delivered to nestlings in Cassin's Auklet (Ptychoramphus aleuticus), a small, zooplanktivorous seabird, on Triangle Island, British Columbia, in 1996-2016. The density of plastic in surrounding waters is moderately high, yet few food loads contained any plastic (3 of 850), and none more than two pieces. That result accords well with previous observations on the other four North Pacific auklets (Aethia spp.), leading us to conclude that true auklets rarely transfer plastic to nestlings. However, many hatch-year Cassin's Auklets found dead in coastal British Columbia, Washington and Oregon during the mass mortality event of fall and winter 2014-15 had plastic in their ventriculi. We suggest that these plastic particles would have been obtained at sea after fledging, perhaps while the birds transited south through a region of high plastic density off the west coast of Vancouver Island, Washington and Oregon.
(Crown Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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