Video: Albatrosses suffer agonizing deaths from ingested plastic

Desdemona Despair

By Matthew Turner
21 June 2018

(Greener Ideal) – If images and videos of whales, dolphins, fish, seals, turtles, and other marine life consuming plastic wasn’t enough to make us feel sick to our own stomachs, we humans have another equally disturbing reality to contend with.

Birds are eating it too.

The messages from both World Environment Day and World Ocean Day this year were simple: the plastic that is swirling around within the world’s oceans MUST be reduced.

Plastic has been found in 9 out of 10 birds, indicating that there is no longer an area of the planet where this debris isn’t wreaking havoc.

This year in recognition of World Ocean Day, a documentary film produced by photographer Chris Jorden was screened online for the event.

The movie Albatross shows the heart-wrenching reality of the effects of ocean plastic, in even the most remote parts of the world.

Filmed on Midway Atoll, a US national environmental refuge site, that is more than 2000 miles away from the nearest continent, the island is in total isolation away from human civilization and is a designated sanctuary for birds.

There are approximately 1.5 million Albatrosses that live on Midway, and they have free roaming of the land as there are no predators.

When he first visited the island in 2009, Jordan saw an island devoid of Albatrosses, which at the time were flying far out to sea over crashing waves.

However, he did witness something horrible, as all he saw was 10s of thousands of dead baby chicks.

Since this first trip, Jordan has spent 8 years going back and forth to the island to capture the beauty of these Albatrosses, and the horrible pains that they are going through, as they unknowingly eat plastic and feed it to their young. [more]

Albatross: A Film About the Plastic We Feed to All Animals, No Matter How Far Away They Fly