How Plastics Are Rewiring Nature

A new study that examines the effects of low-level plastic ingestion in seabird chicks shows fundamental changes associated with organ failure and Alzheimer’s disease. What could this mean for life on Earth, including humans?

Researchers remove plastic from a healthy-looking sable shearwater chick on Lord Howe Island © Neal Haddaway

A sable shearwater chick plods towards me, its feet unused to supporting its body weight on land. It lets out a soft half-shriek, half-hoot and pauses, dropping to its belly. It looks around, surveying the strange lights and sounds of the small group of humans clustered beneath the banyan tree. It waddles a little closer and one of the group gently places her hand on its back, stroking the soft feathers. It stays a while, fascinated by the light in the otherwise pitch-black forest, and then clumsily plods off into the darkness, it has more important things to think about — hunger raising the urge to use its wings for the first time and fly north.

Lord Howe Island is an idyl, but faces the growing problem of global marine plastic pollution © Neal Haddaway

Last year, I was lucky enough to join a group of seabird researchers working on Lord Howe Island, 600 kilometres east of Sydney in the middle of the Tasman Sea. This isolated island…