Plastics and seabirds

Ingestion of plastic particles and entanglement with plastic are two major impacts that impose a direct threat to seabirds. In Belgium there is ample knowledge of the impact of plastics on seabirds. In the As-Made study we try to fill this gap at three different levels.

In the first place we will analyse the long-term database on beached bird surveys hosted by the Research Institute for Nature and Forest (INBO) for entanglement of birds. Next we will use the data collected in the Save The North Sea Project (in cooperation with Imares-Texel) to analyse the origins of the plastics found in stomachs of beached Fulmars. Finally a methodological study is set up to see whether it is possible to count plastics at seas from a steaming ship, similar to the methodology used to count seabirds.