Northern gannets incorporate plastic debris into their nests, creating entanglement hazards that injure and kill adult and chick birds in colonies across the North Atlantic.
Gannet nest plastic entanglement is a direct welfare harm caused by human plastic pollution entering the marine environment. Individual chicks strangled by plastic rope or adult birds whose legs are constricted by fishing line experience prolonged suffering that is entirely preventable through better plastic waste management. Nest cleaning programmes provide direct welfare benefit to individual birds but cannot keep pace with continued plastic input. The root-cause intervention - reducing plastic pollution at source - is the only scalable solution. Every piece of marine plastic prevented from entering the ocean reduces the risk for seabirds that will inevitably incorporate it into nests.