This week #AdriftLab was joined by Tanya, a #TradtionalOwner from Kepa Kurl/Esperance. We traveled to northern Australia (☀️Tanya’s home Country, yay!) and this morning, we flew to a remote #island to undertake a damage assessment after #CycloneIlsa. Sad to say, there was significant mortality of the breeding #seabirds with very few individuals of an #endemic species left alive 🐦🏝🌀

Did we catch your attention with this adorable petrel chick? Oh good, now that we’ve got you…

🚨EXCITING NEW PAPER ALERT 🚨

#AdriftLab announce yet more ground-breaking #research alongside >100 international scientists. Published in #NatureCommunications, we compiled 3 huge datasets: #plastic ingested by 77 #seabirds, >1.6 million #tracking locations & plastic abundance in the #oceans. We used these data to answer the question: which species forage in areas of the ocean where large amounts of plastic have accumulated?

So, why does this matter? The results demonstrate that plastics exposure varies by species, location & season with threatened species being particularly vulnerable. Thus, large-scale collaborative teamwork is essential to identifying priorities, particularly important as the pace/scale of environmental change (including #PlasticPollution) is rapidly increasing & funding for mitigation isnt keeping pace. Thus, a detailed knowledge of when/where marine animals are most at risk of encountering plastics could not be more timely.

Paper free to download here ➡️ https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-38900-z
@SeabirdSentinel @SeabirdResearch

Another #AdriftLab #seabird paper has been featured in #AudubonMagazine (this important #research from #Australia will now reach an even broader audience in the USA) 🥳 - congrats to Hayley (our student) and team 👏

“a word can only do so much. Ultimately, reducing the world’s reliance on #plastic is the preventive treatment for #plasticosis”

#LordHoweIsland #PlasticPollution #SublethalEffects #PlasticIngestion @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField https://www.audubon.org/news/plastic-pollution-so-pervasive-its-causing-new-disease-seabirds

Huge day collecting tissue samples for a traditional #bushfoods project on #microplastics in #fish: a #collaboration between #AdriftLab, DPIRD & #EsperanceTjaljtraak #IndigenousRangers. Our dedicated team started at 6am and volunteered for another early start tomorrow! 🐟♻️💙 #BlackBream #mullet #TraditionalFoods #TeamWork #IndigenousInSTEM @SeabirdSentinel

BIG CONGRATS to #AdriftLab MSc candidate Meg who completed her final seminar on #microplastics in #ports yesterday 🥳. Over the past 9 months, she did an amazing job trialing methods to find one that actually works for #sediments (this was a huge achievement in its own right and the lessons learned will greatly benefit the broader #plastics community) 👏

#FTIR #TeamWork #AnthrofishLab #AIIPOP #EsperanceTjaltjraak #ThesisSubmission

Brilliant final seminar by our phenomenal #AdriftLab student, Gabbi and her superb team of supervisors 🥳👏

Gabbi looked at how we can more accurately & efficiently define #plastic #colour. How the #plastics community currently reports colour is hugely problematic (very ad hoc). Stay tuned for our free, user-friendly tool to streamline your #PlasticPollution workflow.

#CellProfiler #TeamWork #ThesisSubmission #MethodDevelopment #StandardiseReporting #PlasticIngestion #Seabirds #BeachPlastic @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField @Jobium

Today our beautiful, broken #AdriftLab team removed >400 #plastics from one baby #seabird and >50g from another. It’s been rough (!), proud of how we’ve rallied around one another 💔🐦♻️

#PlasticIsNotADistraction #Ecogrief #LordHoweIsland #PollutionIsADesignChoice #PlasticPollution #shearwaters #BiodiversityCrisis #SentinelSpecies #Plasticingestion
@SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField

#AdriftLab at their absolute best: pretending to be #shearwaters during a team photo. @TheLabAndField is a road kill bird, @SeabirdSentinel is regurgitating, the rest is anyones guess 🤣🤣

Massive thanks to photographer extraordinaire Justin for capturing this image for us and being an all-round legend 🙏💙📸

#DreamTeam #GoodScienceGoodPeople #LordHoweIsland #seabirds #PlasticPollution #FieldWork

TWO tile spacers in the stomach of the same baby #seabird 🐦🥺
#PlasticPollution #shearwater #LordHoweIsland #AdriftLab

Today #AdriftLab found a #shearwater entangled in recreational fishing gear (line & hook visible in the top left corner). The line caused serious injury to the wing, leg and foot. We’re sad to say, the bird is no longer alive. Please fish much more carefully and responsibly, what you leave behind causes great suffering and ends the lives of others who are innocent and don’t have a voice
#FishingInteraction #entanglement #SentinelSpecies #seabird #LordHoweIsland @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField

Best hairdo award goes to…this little dude! Tonight he made his first flight into the big blue, never having actually seen the ocean before! His pink toes won’t touch dry land again for FIVE YEARS, and in that time, he’ll probably cover close to 50,000 km! Safe travels, gorgeous one, the #AdriftLab team are already talking about the day we’ll see you again 🌊🪶💗
#Shearwaters #SeabirdSaturday #seabird #LordHoweIsland #Adorable #FieldWork #conservation #PlasticPollution #PlasticIngestion @TheLabAndField @SeabirdSentinel

✨New #AdriftLab paper✨ “Pumice ingestion in #seabirds: interannual variation, and relationships with chick growth and plastic ingestion” 🐦🌋 #OpenAccess (free to download) HERE ➡️ https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00227-023-04203-6

We analysed the amount of ingested #pumice (on LEFT in photo) from 739 Flesh-footed & 173 Wedge-tailed #Shearwaters from #LordHoweIsland during 2011-2022 #LongTermMonitoring

Pumice mass did not vary over time, except for one higher year for each species (2016 for FFSH & 2014 for WTSH), and there was no effect of pumice mass on chick body size at fledgling.

Our results are consistent with the coexistence over geological time of seabirds and floating pumice & provides further evidence that ingested pumice does not cause #Plasticosis or other harm like #IngestedPlastic does
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389422019112

Big thanks to Gabbi for providing the photo used in Figure 1 and to @nhm_london and Esperance Tjaltjraak Native Title Aboriginal Corporation for their endless support!! 🙏 @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField

#AdriftLab’s new paper describing the disease #Plasticosis - fibrosis as a result of exposure to #IngestedPlastics - is ranked 🥇NUMBER ONE🥇 by #Altmetric for the Journal of Hazardous Materials 🥳 #seabirds #microplastics #SublethalEffects #wildlife #OceanHealth #sentinel @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField

✨NEW PAPER✨Imagine you’ve got a piece of plastic stuck in your stomach - stabbing, poking, and prodding constantly. Besides being incredibly uncomfortable, what would that do to your delicate internal tissues?
One of our #AdriftLab Honours students (Hayley) has just published her first, first-author paper in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, investigating the effect that #PlasticIngestion has on the formation of scar tissue within the stomach of #seabirds from #LordHoweIsland. While scar tissue formation is a natural part of the healing process, excessive scarring can impact tissue function and cause disease, known as #fibrosis #OpenAccess paper here ➡️ sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
We found plastic ingestion was significantly related to severe, organ-wide scar tissue formation in the stomach, with some birds exhibiting a near-complete loss of tissue structure (photo panel on LEFT: collagen/scar tissue has stained blue). This is the first time plastic-related scar tissue formation has been documented in wild animals, but what we could see was so severe that it also led us to propose a new disease, #Plasticosis – fibrosis as a result of plastic.
As >1200 species are already documented to ingest plastic across both aquatic and terrestrial environments (including us!), our findings have major implications.
#WomenInSTEM #seabirds #PlasticPollution #SubLethalEffects #Microplastics #Nanoplastics #silicosis @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField

✨New paper alert✨Imagine you’ve got a piece of plastic stuck in your stomach - stabbing, poking, and prodding constantly. Besides being incredibly uncomfortable, what would that do to your delicate internal tissues?

One of our #AdriftLab Honours students (Hayley) has just published her first, first-author paper in the Journal of Hazardous Materials, investigating the effect that #PlasticIngestion has on the formation of scar tissue within the stomach of #seabirds from #LordHoweIsland. While scar tissue formation is a natural part of the healing process, excessive scarring can impact tissue function and cause disease, known as #fibrosis #OpenAccess paper here ➡️ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304389423003722

We found plastic ingestion was significantly related to severe, organ-wide scar tissue formation in the stomach, with some birds exhibiting a near-complete loss of tissue structure (photo panel on LEFT: collagen/scar tissue has stained blue). This is the first time plastic-related scar tissue formation has been documented in wild animals, but what we could see was so severe that it also led us to propose a new disease, #Plasticosis – fibrosis as a result of plastic.

As >1200 species are already documented to ingest plastic across both aquatic and terrestrial environments (including us!), our findings have major implications.
#WomenInSTEM #seabirds #PlasticPollution #SubLethalEffects #Microplastics #Nanoplastics #silicosis

🎉BIG CONGRATS🎉 to #AdriftLab PhD candidate Alix - today she aced her Confirmation of Candidature exam - whoop whoop 🙌 Alix delivered her seminar on how #nanoplastics affect #wildlife health & answered all the tough examiner questions with professionalism and grace 🤩 Amazing project, fantastic field site and team - can’t wait to be reunited on #LordHoweIsland soon!! 🐦🏝💙

Now, to submit chapter one - a brilliantly written perspectives piece on the need for more #InterdisciplinaryScience to accelerate the pace and depth of #PlasticPollution research

#GoodScienceGoodPeople #SublethalEffects #seabirds #microplastics #PlasticIngestion @SeabirdSentinel @TheLabAndField

🚨NEW PAPER ALERT🚨 recent #AdriftLab MSc graduate Karli Mylius has published her first, first-author paper - yay yay👏
Our research focused on the ingestion of #nanoplastics by #shorebirds as few data exist, globally. To do this, we also collected data on #plastic particles in beach #sediments from locations where we saw the birds actively feeding in #Tasmania.
We studied #HoodedPlover (Vulnerable species) and #PiedOystercatcher (📸 credit Eric J Woehler) & found 1000s of tiny plastics in ALL of the birds and sediments we examined, no matter how remote the location.
Hooded Plovers have shorter beaks, and because of this, they feed in shallower (surface) sediments where more plastic has been shown to accumulate. Not surprisingly, their #guano 💩 contained 32× more plastics, on average, than Pied Oystercatchers! 😳😢
We gratefully acknowledge the #TraditionalOwners of lutruwita, where this research was undertaken and funding from BirdLife TAS and a generous philanthropist who directly supported both students involved in this project during the 2022 cost of living crisis.
ACCESS THE PAPER HERE (free to download for 50 days) ➡️
https://authors.elsevier.com/c/1gNvZzLNScBJk

#FlowCytometry #FTIR #microplastics #beaches #DetectionMethods #ParticleSize

At #AdriftLab, we’ve been fortunate to work alongside INCREDIBLE folks who help us tell the #shearwater’s story on #LordHoweIsland. From jewellery makers to poets to champion swimmers, we are in awe of the kindness of others, and their dedication to #OceanConservation.

In 2022, we were blessed to work with internationally renowned #photojournalist Justin Gilligan who took these ⬇️ stunning photos of our team, the birds, and the impact of #PlasticIngestion (📸 credit: Justin).

Justin’s photos, and words written by Karen McGee, have been featured in #AustralianGeographic “A year in the field: AG photographers on assignment in 2022”. Check out our brilliant story (and others too!!) 🤩 https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/news/2022/12/a-year-in-the-field-ag-photographers-on-assignment-in-2022/?fbclid=PAAaYL9fTOMl4ZgI9QgNHP_7CDMlghj-f4EWli1UsfdlLn2-hyq8K3AdbYijM

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 #AdriftLab students developed a new method for quantifying tiny #plastics in #wildlife. Using #FlowCytometry, we asked: “what #PlasticPollution is missed by relying on methods that can’t detect particles 200 nm–70 μm?”
Our results: up to 553 ± 91 plastics/mg in #seabird guano. On average we found ~1300x more #nanoplastics compared with existing methods. Thus, our capacity to accurately describe exposure depends on detection limit! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c06973

🚨NEW PAPER🚨 #AdriftLab students developed a new method for quantifying tiny #plastics in #wildlife. Using #FlowCytometry, we asked: “what #PlasticPollution is missed by relying on methods that can’t detect particles 200 nm–70 μm?”
Our results: up to 553 ± 91 plastics/mg in #seabird guano. On average we found ~1300x more #nanoplastics compared with existing methods. Thus, our capacity to accurately describe exposure depends on detection limit! https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.2c06973