GMIT PhD student Heidi Acampora with a dead seabird. "The litter you dispose of inappropriately is likely to have an unfortunate encounter with marine life,” she warns.

Galway student studies impact of marine litter on wildlife

Jessica Thompson

News

Marine litter has become a major issue that cannot be ignored, according to Galway PhD student Heidi Acampora who is researching the effects of marine litter on the health of the ocean.

Based in GMIT, Ms Acampora carries out her research on sea birds. She says European regulations such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) require countries to monitor marine litter through animal life and this has proven to be successful in other countries.

In the North Sea, for example, a species of sea bird called Fulmarus Glacialis (fulmars) are used for monitoring sea litter.

“My research aims to prove if this can be done in Ireland and if not through fulmars, then which would be the alternative species suitable for such monitoring,” said Miss Acampora.

“Sea birds are good indicators because they spend an enormous amount of time at sea, but come to shore to breed, and that is when we can assess them. Marine litter has become a major issue that cannot be ignored.”

According to Ms Acampora, it’s difficult to find parts of the sea that aren’t polluted, especially with plastics.

“Plastics break down into smaller pieces and marine animals can mistake them for food. You see, plastics are generally positively buoyant, so they are at the surface or high in the water column and birds can mistake them for small prey that they would be used to eating.

“So they think they are ingesting nutritious food, when in reality they are eating a synthetic material that can have severe damages to their health, even leading them to death,” she said.

Heidi became involved in this research when writing her Masters thesis, which focused on the ingestion of litter by a species of seabird which is very common in Australia; the muttonbird, also known as Puffinus tenuirostris.

“I was very moved and intrigued by the marine litter issue while doing that research. When I came back from Australia to Brazil, where I’m originally from, I joined forces with other people and groups interested in doing something on the marine litter issue, and we together founded an NGO, the Brazilian Marine Litter Association. So I ended up being very active on the subject, but still wanted to continue doing research,” she said.

“I had been to Ireland for a Summer School and saw GMIT was looking for PhD students, so I contacted them, told them my research interests and we wrote a project and applied for funding and I got it.”

Ms Acampora is funded by the Brazilian Government to do her PhD research in Ireland, but is still very active with the NGO she founded.

In her research, she analyses the stomach contents of seabirds. One such seabird found on Dog’s Bay in Connemara had ingested “an impressive amount of litter: more than 400 pieces of plastic!”

“It was clear that his small stomach had no more space for real food, because you see, some species of seabirds are not able to regurgitate non-digestible matter, so that litter accumulates in their stomach, leaving no space for actual nutritious food,” she said.

Marine litter can have a negative impact on not only seabirds, but also human health, according to Miss Acampora’s research. Marine life can get tangled in debris or nets and suffocate or suffer injury.

“Plastics have additives in their composition to give them certain characteristics, such as colour, resistance to UV or flames and the like. These additives are extremely toxic and they have been proved to cause hormonal disrupt on species.

“These impacts can escalate up the food chain and even fish or any seafood that we are known to consume could have been contaminated that way. Thus marine litter is not really only an aesthetical problem; it can cause an array of severe damage to marine and even human life.”

Heidi is currently putting together the ‘Republic of Ireland Beached Bird Survey’ with the help of volunteers who regularly walk the beaches and report or collect any dead seabirds they find.

She then takes these seabirds and analyses their stomach contents so she can carry on with the research on marine litter.

“And of course, it all starts with no littering. The litter you dispose of inappropriately on land is most likely to be carried by wind or rain, end up at sea and have an unfortunate encounter with marine life,” she said.

For more information on Miss Acampora’s research, visit plastictides.wordpress.com or email heidi.acampora@research.gmit.ie.