Monitoring plastic ingestion by the northern fulmar Fulmarus glacialis in the North Sea

Micro-and macro-plastics in marine species from Nordic waters

“…However, there are some published papers on findings within the water column (e.g. Talvitie et al, 2015;Gewert et al, 2017) as well as ingestion in biota such as seabirds (van Franeker, 1985;van Franeker et al, 2011), fish (Skóra et al, 2012;Foekema et al, 2013;Bråte et al, 2016;Rummel et al, 2016) and invertertes (Vandermeersch et al, 2015;Wójcik-Fudalewska et al, 2016). The current data ground is small, but there are several ongoing projects on plastics in Nordic waters which have a specific focus on plastic ingestion.…”

“…Finally, secondary ingestion occurs when animals feed on prey which had previously ingested plastic debris and has been suggested for seabirds (van Franeker et al, 2011), fish (Perry et al, 2013), crustaceans (e.g. Murray & Cowie 2011;Watts et al, 2014), and seals (Eriksson & Burton, 2003).…”

“…Macroplastic items that have been ingested by biota are usually identified according to their appearance in digestive tracts following investigation of dead carcasses, regurgitation or faecal pellets. (Mrosovsky et al, 2009;van Franeker et al, 2011;Baulch & Perry, 2014;Nelms et al, 2017) while extraction of microplastics ingested by biota can be achieved through numerous different methods. Once organisms have been collected, the target tissues need to be extracted.…”

“…On a global scale, sea birds have been found with an increasing amount of plastics being ingested from the 1960s, however it might found that the levels have stabilized over time . Most data on plastic ingestion within the Nordic area comes from seabirds, based on decade-long monitoring efforts with northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) (van Franeker et al, 1985(van Franeker et al, , 2011. Many monitoring schemes were initially devised to target visible plastic items and most studies do not include data of microplastics, i.e.…”

“…Other monitoring studies from the Nordic environment have also investigated temporal and spatial trends in plastic ingestion by seabirds. For example, data from the North Sea andSkagerrak (2002-2011), show that 95% of the examined fulmars had ingested plastics (van Franeker et al, 2011). No significant decrease in amount of plastic in fulmar stomachs has been found over the last decade, which suggests that plastic levels in the environment might have stabilised (OSPAR 2015).…”