‘Fresh seal blood looks like beauty and life’

Plastic ingestion, retention, and transport in animals from the eastern Canadian Arctic

“…To meet these objectives, in Chapter 3, I investigated whether seals collected from four communities in the eastern Canadian Arctic were ingesting and retaining plastics in their (Searles, 2019), and as such, it is critical to examine plastic ingestion and accumulation in species that may result in negative effects on wildlife. The main objective of this chapter was to assess whether seals in the eastern Canadian Arctic are ingesting and retaining plastics (> 425 µm) in their stomachs.…”

“…Few studies of plastic ingestion and retention rates in stomachs exist for marine mammals and this is particularly true for Arctic marine mammals. Seals (Phocidae) are an important component of marine Arctic ecosystems and also make up an important portion of the diets of Inuit, holding high cultural, social and economic value for many northern communities (Searles, 2019 Provencher et al, 2010), and that contaminants potentially derived from plastics were found in Arctic seal tissues (Lu et al, 2019), we predicted that we would find plastic debris in the seal stomachs. These data are important as they provide the first assessment of plastic pollution in an ecologically and culturally important marine mammal in the eastern Canadian Arctic.…”