Marine Animals Ingest Large Amounts Of Waste Plastic

Marine debris affect Laysan Albatross chicks in the remote Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. We found 306 pieces of debris, mostly plastics ranging from bottle caps to lighters to fishing gear, inside the stomach of this Laysan Albatross chick just a few months old.

More than a thousand miles from the nearest urban area, Kure has a large lagoon full of sea turtles, sea mammals and fishes- and hundreds of thousands of seabirds. They come to this predator-free atoll to mate and raise their young. But marine debris are taking a heavy toll on these seabirds.