Albatrosses and Plastic Pollution: Feeding Garbage to Their Chicks

Albatrosses are among the most severely affected seabirds by ocean plastic pollution, with parents inadvertently feeding plastic debris to their chicks, causing suffering, starvation, and death.

Key Facts

Laysan albatross chicks on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific are found dead with stomachs packed with plastic: cigarette lighters, bottle caps, fishing line, and microplastic fragments.
Adult albatrosses forage across vast ocean areas and cannot distinguish floating plastic from squid and fish; they feed these items to chicks as regurgitated boluses.
Studies show Laysan albatross chicks ingest an average of 0.1 kg of plastic — equivalent to feeding a human infant several kilograms of indigestible material.
Plastic in chick stomachs causes false satiety (reducing feeding frequency), intestinal blockage, and toxin exposure from plastic-associated pollutants.
Chick mortality from plastic ingestion on Midway has been documented for decades; an estimated 40% of Laysan albatross chicks die before fledging, with plastic identified as a contributing factor in many deaths.
Adult albatrosses can regurgitate plastic and survive chronic exposure better than chicks, but carry body burdens of plastic-associated chemicals.
22 of the 22 albatross species are threatened or endangered; plastic pollution is one of multiple threats alongside longline bycatch and climate change.

Welfare Considerations

Albatross chick deaths from plastic ingestion represent one of the most viscerally distressing welfare consequences of ocean plastic pollution. Chicks receive plastic debris from their parents over weeks, accumulating indigestible material that fills their stomachs, prevents normal feeding, and causes progressive starvation despite continued parental provisioning. The physical discomfort of a stomach full of plastic fragments, combined with the metabolic consequences of starvation as fat reserves deplete, represents sustained suffering before death. The parents continue feeding attempts — the full behavioral repertoire of parental care — unaware of what their regurgitated boluses contain. This intersection of behavioral commitment, environmental contamination, and individual suffering at scale is one of the clearest illustrations of how ocean plastic pollution translates into animal welfare harm.

What You Can Do

Reduce single-use plastic consumption and support extended producer responsibility legislation.
Participate in beach and waterway cleanup programs that remove plastic before it enters the ocean.
Support the Albatross Task Force and BirdLife International programs addressing albatross threats.
Advocate for international agreements to reduce marine plastic pollution including the Global Plastics Treaty.
Learn about and share the documentary "Albatross" by Chris Jordan, which documents Midway plastic impacts.