These 'Crunchy' Seabirds Are Crunchier Than Ever Before-for a Very Grim Reason

Seabirds in Australia are breaking records again. Last year, researchers on Australia’s Lord Howe Island found birds so stuffed with plastic that they physically “crunched.” Among these crunchy birds was a dead chick that had eaten a record-breaking 778 pieces of plastic. If you think it can’t possibly get any worse, think again.

In a study published earlier this month in the journal Earth’s Future, researchers from the Adrift Lab in Australia discovered a fledgling that had eaten 894 pieces of plastic—a new record. The scientists analyzed plastic ingestion patterns in Australian seabirds using 16 years of data, detecting a sudden jump in bird exposure to plastic in recent years that aligns with the increasing amount of waste ending up in our oceans.

Since 2023, the record for the greatest number of plastic items found in a single bird has been broken every single year.