The problem these birds face shows us that we can’t put off the fight against plastic pollution any longer.
United States: Birds found on an Australian island are so stuffed with plastic that they can be heard crunching by researchers.
Plastic-Filled Birds Discovered on Lord Howe Island
Alex Bond, principal curator at Britain’s National History Museum, discovered that young chicks and even a dead bird had plastic inside them in a similar way to a brick, as reported by HealthDay.
“This isn’t microplastics,” he told The Washington Post. “We’re talking items up to and including the size of bottle caps and tetra pack lids, cutlery, clothes pegs, the takeaway soy sauce fish bottle that you get from restaurants.”
A Crisis Growing Beneath the Waves
A prestigious study revealed this year that mankind had dumped more than 170 trillion bits of plastic into the seas, resulting in a plastic smog that doubles in size approximately every six years.
Birds on a Remote Island in Australia Make 'Gut-Wrenching Crunching Sounds' Dead or Alive Because They Are Full of Littered Plastics#Plastic makes up 20% of their body mass.
— The Last Show- Karen Lee (@thelastshow) May 26, 2025
778 individual pieces of plastic found inside one #bird's body!#Conservation https://t.co/qzpEKERN3Z
Bond visited Lord Howe Island, located 360 miles east of Australia, not long ago. He works closely with experts who are studying the threats of plastic waste in world oceans. Researchers at the center have been examining sable shearwaters, a native bird species, for almost two decades.
The team believes the birds find and eat bits of plastic in the sea and then feed them to their offspring, according to The Post.
About 44,000 sable shearwaters live on the island, and it is famous for its volcanoes and wide range of birds. By their third month, shearwater chicks reach Japan and remain out at sea for up to seven years before returning to raise young on the island.
Plastic Is Harming Young Birds – Even Their Brains
Scientists examined the shores for dead seabirds and studied what was found in their stomachs. They dried out live birds to remove anything left inside. Sometimes, 20% of the weight — often 2 ounces — was plastic, according to Bond.
He noted that chemicals in the plastic are what lead adult birds to assume it is food while fishing near Tasmania.
“These birds eat fish and squid, and you know, the pieces that we pull out, there’s no way that that would be sort of accidentally attached … to a prey item,” Bond told The Post.
The bird will make a crunching sound if you hold the back and press its belly.
A Warning for the World
University lecturer Jack Rivers-Auty explains that in some mammals, the fat in their diet has turned their belly muscles hard and compact.
The plastic effects harm nearly every part of the birds’ bodies, including the brain, according to Putman. Brain damage seen in birds aged less than 6 months is comparable to dementia, he explained. Even just a small amount of plastic affects them greatly.
What Can You Do?
Plastic remains unbroken in the environment for hundreds of years, and its tiny pieces are everywhere.
“The plastic crisis is accelerating — and demanding more from all of us,” Rivers-Auty told The Post.
Many experts say that the discovery on Lord Howe Island is a preview of what is in store for other habitats.
“The things that we’re seeing now in sable shearwaters are things that we’re absolutely going to see in a lot more species in the years and decades to come,” Bond said, as reported by HealthDay.
“Pay attention,” Rivers-Auty said.
“We need to ask these questions — urgently and collectively,” he said. “Because the signs are already here.”