Seabirds ingest plastic debris at alarming rates, causing malnutrition, internal injury, and death. The scale of plastic pollution in the ocean makes this one of the largest sources of wildlife welfare harm globally.
Plastic ingestion causes prolonged and invisible suffering in seabirds. A stomach full of plastic provides no nutrition while creating a false sense of satiation, causing slow starvation. Sharp plastic fragments lacerate internal tissues. Toxic chemicals leaching from plastics accumulate in fatty tissues, causing hormonal disruption and immune suppression. Parent birds that feed plastic to chicks are not negligent — they are doing exactly what their instincts tell them to do, but in an environment so contaminated that natural behaviors have become harmful. The scale of seabird plastic mortality — one million deaths annually — makes plastic pollution one of the largest ongoing welfare harms to wild birds. Individual plastic reduction and systemic policy change are both needed at scale.