Brutal: How plastic is killing off Arctic wildlifeThis bear’s horrific ordeal, witnessed by Geir Wing Gabrielsen, one of the world’s top experts in Arctic toxicology, is just another illustration of plastic pollution in what is supposed to be one of the world’s last pristine wildernesses.Other victims include reindeer, Arctic foxes, seabirds such as Arctic terns and fulmar, seals and fish which are increasingly being found with pieces of plastic in their stomachs.
Svalbard has a population of just 2,600, most of it in the tiny capital of Longyearbyen, but the plastic is carried here, sometimes over decades, from as far away as America, Canada and the UK on ocean currents, the wind and the sea ice.
Much of it is invisible, ground down by the waves into microplastic pieces smaller than a fifth of an inch (5mm) and microscopic nanoplastic.
Dr Gabrielsen, 63, of the Norwegian Polar Institute, said the crisis is going to get worse without urgent action.
He said: “Worldwide, the industry expects to see a threefold increase in plastic production by 2050. Very little, only 14 per cent, of plastic is being recycled or burned to generate energy.
“We need to recycle much more and even incineration is an interesting way to solve the problem.”
Dr Gabrielsen, who also teaches at the University Centre in Svalbard, said: “We were in a helicopter when we saw the polar bear lying in the snow in the north of Svalbard in 2014 while volunteers were cleaning the beaches of plastic litter.
A dead Reindeer with antlers that have been stuck in plastic netting on the Island of Spitzbergen
We are seeing more and more cases of animals getting caught in plastic“It was a female bear weighing about 200kg [440lb] and had got entangled in a 150kg net. The bear had been tagged in an ear and the net had got caught around that.
“It dragged the net with its teeth from the beach about 300 metres [330 yards] to the snow. We were going to tranquillise it and free it but somehow it wriggled free.
“But we are seeing more and more cases of animals getting caught in plastic – seals with plastic strapping bands around them, seabirds caught in ‘ghost’ fishing nets that have been abandoned at sea, reindeer getting their antlers tangled in strapping bands, ropes or fishing nets, as well as Arctic foxes.”
Other sad images show a dead Arctic tern tangled in plastic rope – one of the world’s most graceful birds denied the chance to perform the world’s longest migration from the Arctic to the Antarctic.
Even the Arctic flowers are contaminated.
On the tundra we found a beautiful pinkish compass flower, which blooms only on its south side, with a strand of rope fibre entwined in its heart.
Dr Gabrielsen, who has carried out research on Svalbard for 37 years, also has the evidence that the problem is getting worse.
In 1983 the Norwegian Polar Institute analysed the stomachs of 40 fulmar, a northern relative of albatrosses which ranges far out to sea plucking krill, squid and fish from the surface.
The NPI found that four fulmar had small bits of plastic in their stomach.
But in 2013 Dr Gabrielsen and a British postgraduate student, Alice Trevail, repeated the experiment and found the situation reversed – with only four birds without plastic in their stomach.
Worse still, in 1983 the affected birds were carrying on average 0.75 pieces each but in 2013 the average was 15.3 pieces, with some having swallowed more than 200 pieces of microplastic.
The average burden carried in the affected birds was 0.08grams – very near the limit recommended by the Ospar Convention (The Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the NorthEast Atlantic).
Dr Gabrielsen said: “Over 0.1g there are indications that the birds will struggle to digest other food and therefore will not get enough energy and die of starvation. “But further south this is a bigger problem for fulmars. Five years ago 24 per cent of the Svalbard birds were above the 0.1g limit.
“In the North Sea 60 to 70 per cent of UK fulmars are over 0.1g. These are birds that can live to be 70 and only start breeding at about eight years old.”
The pollution can be seen on the beaches of Svalbard.On a short walk along the coast by Longyearbyen, we found plastic sheets, a tyre, plastic bags, old ropes and plastic fibres, all near where Arctic terns were nesting.
Dr Gabrielsen said that on Svalbard about 80 per cent of the plastic comes from the fishing industry which, thanks to climate change, is now trawling waters once inaccessible due to ice.
But plastic is also drifting to this Arctic haven from as far away as America, Canada and China.
Dr Gabrielsen said studies of sea ice have found between 50 and 350 particles of plastic per litre but samples taken between Greenland and Svalbard by Germany’s Alfred Wegener Institute revealed up to 12,000 particles per litre.
He said: “Studies show that 90 per cent of all plastic in the sea is on the sea floor, five per cent on the beaches and five per cent on the surface. What you see on the beaches is just the tip of the iceberg.
“It is getting into the food chain. A Swedish study showed that plankton pick up nanoplastics, get eaten by zooplankton which get eaten by fish and it crosses the blood to brain barrier, changing the behaviour of fish.
“A study by the Norwegian Water Institute of 302 cod caught the length of Norway found that three to five per cent have microplastics in their stomachs but off Bergen, where there is a big human population, the figure rose to 27 per cent.
“We have not yet been able to discover whether this plastic ends up on the plate but the World Economic Forum says that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the sea than fish. If we continue like this, I am sure this will be the case.”
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