Polymer types ingested by northern fulmars ( Fulmarus glacialis ) and southern hemisphere relatives
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Polymer types ingested by northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) and southern hemisphere relatives Susanne Kühn 1
&
Albert van Oyen 2 & Elisa L. Bravo Rebolledo 1,3 & Amalie V. Ask 4 & Jan Andries van Franeker 1
Received: 6 April 2020 / Accepted: 16 August 2020 # The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Although ingestion of plastic by tubenosed seabirds has been documented regularly, identification of the polymer composition of these plastics has rarely been described. Polymer assessment may assist in identifying sources and may indicate risks from additives occurring in specific types of polymers. Using known test materials, two identification methods Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and near infrared spectroscopy (FTIR and NIR) were compared. Although both methods were found to be similarly suitable for identification of plastic polymers, a significant difference was observed in identification of natural materials. FTIR frequently misclassified natural materials as being a synthetic polymer. Within our results, an 80% match score threshold functioned best to distinguish between natural items and synthetics. Using NIR, the historical variability of plastics ingested by northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) from the Dutch sector of the North Sea was analysed for three time periods since the 1980s. For the more recent decade, variability between fulmars from different regions in the northeast Atlantic was investigated. Regional variation was further explored by analysing plastics obtained from the stomachs of southern hemisphere relatives of the fulmar (southern fulmar, cape petrel, snow petrel) and Wilson’s storm petrel. Results show that proportional abundance of polymer types in these seabirds is closely related to the plastic categories that they ingest (e.g. pellets, foam, fragments). The uptake of different plastic categories and related polymer types most likely reflects spatial and temporal variations in availability rather than ingestion preferences of the birds. Keywords Marine plastic debris . Ingestion . Procellariiformes . Northern fulmar (Fulmarus glacialis) . Near infrared spectroscopy (NIR) . Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR)
Introduction Tubenosed seabirds (Procellariiformes) are known to ingest debris including plastics from the sea surface. At a global Responsible Editor: Philippe Garrigues Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-10540-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Susanne Kühn [email protected] 1
Wageningen Marine Research, Ankerpark 27, 1781 Den Helder, AG, Netherlands
2
CARAT GmbH, Harderhook 22, 46395 Bocholt, Germany
3
Bureau Waardenburg BV, Varkensmarkt 9, 4101 Culemborg, CK, Netherlands
4
Norwegian Polar Institute, Fram Centre, P.O. 6606 Langnes, N-9296 Tromsø, Norway
scale, 91 of 144 known procellariform seabird species have been recorded to ingest plastic (Kühn and van Franeker 2020). In many cases, ingestion may occur intentionally, but
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