Voice of Byron regular, Norval Watson, spotted this thought provoking article and asks if Byron’s litter is possibly poisoning local seabirds.
Dinner or debris? Seabirds chow down on plastic because it stinks like food.
There is currently a lot of plastic waste swirling about in the ocean. This often shows up in the bellies of deceased animals, but why exactly the creatures are drawn to the debris hasn’t been so well understood. Now a new study has revealed that the stench emitted from the plastic waste is the same one that some species have relied on for thousands of years to find food, shining new light on why sometimes these last suppers come all too fast.
The key to the discovery is a sulfur compound called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). DMS is released when animals such as krill consume algae, and previous research has revealed that it serves as a type of dinner bell for tubenosed seabirds like albatross and petrels by alerting them to the krill’s presence, which just happens to be one of their favorite meals.