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Annual report published on plastics in fulmars from the UK in 2021

Published on
March 14, 2023

Wageningen Marine Research has published the annual report on plastics in fulmars from the UK for the year 2021. The policy target for the reduction of marine plastic litter is still out of reach, however, over the past 10 years the data suggests a significant decreasing trend in overall plastic mass.

Dissection of fulmars at Dove Marine Laboratory (Newcastle University). The coordinator of the beached bird survey and the fulmar project in Northeast England, Dan Turner, took this picture of Kelly McIntosh (Local coordinator at Marine Scotland) dissecting a fulmar under supervision of Jan van Franeker (Wageningen Marine Research). Without the good collaboration with local coordinators and the help of universities, this work would be impossible. Photo: Dan Turner
Dissection of fulmars at Dove Marine Laboratory (Newcastle University). The coordinator of the beached bird survey and the fulmar project in Northeast England, Dan Turner, took this picture of Kelly McIntosh (Local coordinator at Marine Scotland) dissecting a fulmar under supervision of Jan van Franeker (Wageningen Marine Research). Without the good collaboration with local coordinators and the help of universities, this work would be impossible. Photo: Dan Turner

Results up to 2021

According to the OSPAR Ecological Quality Objective and the UK Marine Strategy, not more than 10% of the fulmars from the UK coast should have 0.1 gram or more plastic in their stomachs. Details for fulmars from the UK North Sea coast over the 2017-21 period show that 45.3% of birds have ingested more than 0.1 g of plastic. These values are very similar to the results of the previous report (in which 45.0% of the fulmars exceeded the threshold between 2016-20). Currently, in most North Sea areas, around 50% of investigated fulmar stomachs have more than 0.1 g of plastic. However, this is still distant from OSPAR’s ecological target for marine litter. All details of the results have been described in a report by Wageningen Marine Research.

Read the report

Individual plastic loads

For the recent 5-year period (2017-2021), 84% of 108 investigated fulmars had some plastic in the stomach. Averaged over all individuals, stomachs contained 23.8 plastic particles, with a combined average mass of 0.17 gram per bird. To inform all volunteers, a Finders Report has been published as well. In this informal report, details on each individual fulmar are given, accompanied by pictures of the plastic content per bird. Each volunteer that had found a fulmar can see the plastic load of her or his own fulmars. With this, the scientists want to thank the volunteers for their efforts and hope to stimulate the collection of dead fulmars in the future.

Read the report

Stomach content of fulmar NEE-2020-002. The amount of plastic found in this fulmar is the closest to the average mass of plastic (0.17 gram) found in the UK between 2017 and 2021. The fulmar was found by M. Dewar in Boulmer, Northumberland (Northeast England). It was an adult male that died of starvation and contained two industrial pellets (top left) and 53 user plastics, with a total mass of 0.1517 gram. Note, the number of particles (55 pieces in this bird) is twice as high as on average (24 pieces per bird). Photo: Jan van Franeker
Stomach content of fulmar NEE-2020-002. The amount of plastic found in this fulmar is the closest to the average mass of plastic (0.17 gram) found in the UK between 2017 and 2021. The fulmar was found by M. Dewar in Boulmer, Northumberland (Northeast England). It was an adult male that died of starvation and contained two industrial pellets (top left) and 53 user plastics, with a total mass of 0.1517 gram. Note, the number of particles (55 pieces in this bird) is twice as high as on average (24 pieces per bird). Photo: Jan van Franeker