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Description of the Resource

Title
Seabirds and marine plastic debris in Greenland: A synthesis and recommendations for monitoring
Title (original)
Seabirds and marine plastic debris in Greenland: A synthesis and recommendations for monitoring
Description
To improve our understanding of seabirds and marine plastic in this region, the Circular Ocean project completed a synthesis of the published and grey literature to obtain information on all known documented cases of plastic ingestion and nest incorporation by this group. They found that of 35 seabird species that commonly occur in Greenland, two (6%) had evidence of ingesting plastic. However, information from multiple countries and years was only available for one species, the Little Auk (Alle alle). No published information was found on nest incorporation. This reveals that there little knowledge about the current prevalence of plastic ingestion and nest incorporation for many species. Furthermore, in all studies, the metrics reported were inadequate to carry out robust comparisons among locations and species or perform meta-analyses. This synthesis highlights important gaps in our current knowledge, and recommendations for multi-jurisdictional collaboration to obtain a more comprehensive and current understanding of how marine plastic is affecting seabirds across Norway and Svalbard.
Authors
Nina J O’Hanlon, Neil A James, Elizabeth A Masden, Alexander L Bond
Publication year
2017
Resource type
Reports
Language
English
Areas of knowledge
Monitoring of marine litter
Toxicity and impact of meso and macro marine litter
Number of links to resource
1

Links to resource (1)

Related Project (1)