Albatross mistake plastic for seashells

From Science Notes:

In a clash between the modern world and instinct, albatrosses bring pieces of plastic to their young. We hypothesize that if the only hard, crunchy things around were seashells, the nestlings would be getting their calcium. Instead, many of them die, guts stuffed with plastic trash. Tragic.

A study in 2001 found that there is six times as much plastic as zooplankton:

No place is free of it.

Beige plastics are eaten by krill-eaters. Plastic pellets a (”nurdles”) re eaten by animals that look for fish eggs. The nurdles concentrate PCBs and pesticides.

The North Pacific Gyre concentrates floating garbage:

Read “Altered Oceans: A Plague of Plastic Chokes the Oceans.”