Date: 25/03/2021 10:50:50
From: roughbarked
ID: 1715044
Subject: Those muttonbirds and pumice

https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v662/p157-168/

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Date: 26/03/2021 08:31:32
From: mollwollfumble
ID: 1715569
Subject: re: Those muttonbirds and pumice

roughbarked said:


https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v662/p157-168/

> Desperate times call for desperate measures: non-food ingestion by starving seabirds

Oh, so that’s why we put floating plastic in the sea.

> We investigated ingestion of pumice and plastic in carcasses of short-tailed shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris following a significant starvation mortality event, during which millions of shearwaters died along the eastern Australian coastline in 2013. We found that the stomachs of 96.5% of 172 seabirds sampled contained pumice or plastic at the time of death.

> We used global location sensors to track the 2013 shearwater migration and overlaid these tracks with the dispersing pumice raft from the 2012 Havre underwater volcanic eruption, Kermadec Islands, New Zealand. We determined that shearwaters in a starved state had ingested pumice 12-41 h before death, indicating that starving or food-stressed seabirds exhibit reduced prey discrimination.

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Date: 26/03/2021 08:38:42
From: buffy
ID: 1715573
Subject: re: Those muttonbirds and pumice

mollwollfumble said:


roughbarked said:

https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v662/p157-168/

> Desperate times call for desperate measures: non-food ingestion by starving seabirds

Oh, so that’s why we put floating plastic in the sea.

> We investigated ingestion of pumice and plastic in carcasses of short-tailed shearwaters Ardenna tenuirostris following a significant starvation mortality event, during which millions of shearwaters died along the eastern Australian coastline in 2013. We found that the stomachs of 96.5% of 172 seabirds sampled contained pumice or plastic at the time of death.

> We used global location sensors to track the 2013 shearwater migration and overlaid these tracks with the dispersing pumice raft from the 2012 Havre underwater volcanic eruption, Kermadec Islands, New Zealand. We determined that shearwaters in a starved state had ingested pumice 12-41 h before death, indicating that starving or food-stressed seabirds exhibit reduced prey discrimination.

Need to check the stomachs of birds not during a significant mortality event too, to make sure they don’t normally munch on some pumice.

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