Green | October 19, 2009 | 42 comments

Shocking pictures of bird corpses filled with plastic

source: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/travel-outdoors/chris-jordan-midway-birds.html

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You've heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Texas-sized gyre of floating plastic litter. But have you seen what happens with wildlife eats this plastic? Photographer Chris Jordan brings us these haunting images of albatross chicks that have died from ingesting plastic
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42 comments // Shocking pictures of bird corpses filled with plastic

  • quanta
    • 0
      quanta  

    • We've known about the life of plastic for a long time, yet companies still use it and the planet hasn't outlawed it W
      here is the representation of ,we the people ,don't want this. We didn't want it 30 years ago, and don't want it now. Stop buying plastic anything, and recycle everything. Do your own part as well as you can and if you're in a position of being able to implement policy do that too. And there could be another side to why bird parenting could be, feeding their young something that would kill them deliberately. They do know what food is,

    • 2 years ago
  • quanta
  • Chique
    • 0
      Chique  
    • Image

    • Excerpt:

      "Before you know it, I'm pressing "OK" on my grand total of something like 75 bucks worth of what is essentially a pile of awesome landfill-ready Halloween decorations, most of which I can never really use again but will surely add color and joy to the slippery, messy, adult pumpkin-carving revelry soon to take place in my home. Mmm, consumption culture. It's what's for dinner.

      No matter how hard I try to ignore it, no matter how much I try to behave like a good American consumer who's just doing my part to stimulate the economy, I find I'm often sort of morbidly transfixed by such effluvia, by the flood of plastic detritus that flows through our culture like an irresistible toxin and which invariably ends up in the garbage dumps and maybe the Pacific Garbage Patch, where tiny bits of it turn up in the stomachs of very unhappy seabirds. Delightful."

    • 2 years ago
  • arcata_berry
    • 0
      arcata_berry  

    • Tragic. infuriating. ken burns hasn't been filming this aspect of what we are doing to the resources we are so privileged to share with thousands of other species. but if everyone, individually, doesn't bend over and pick up the trash, and conserve water and cut the plastic 6-pack ring so the birds don't get their beaks trapped inside & starve to death, Burns could be delivering a farewell address. It's that serious.

    • 2 years ago
  • think_free
    • 0
      think_free  

    • This goes to show why vegetarianism makes even more sense.
      ****

      I think it will only change when we implement madatory recycling programs and a serious environmental clean up.

      I have always wondered why we don't load all the harmful plastics and such into a giant rocket and blast it to the sun.

    • 2 years ago
  • Manatee_man
  • stephenthomson
    • 0
      stephenthomson  

    • Can we do something about bottle caps? They are not marked and have no recyclability, which is ridiculous.

      bottle caps
      jar lids
      cellophane
      plastic wrappers
      etc.

    • 2 years ago
  • shaun0h
    • 0
      shaun0h  
    • Image
    • stephenthomson:

      I had heard that one could collect bottle caps for chemotherapy but apparently that was a hoax, however... I did find this Aveda site, and while the caps don't get used for a charitable cause, they are recycled. As far as cellophane and plastic wrappers I'm not sure, but my local school system is more than happy to take jar lids for use in art classes and craft projects. Good luck.

    • 2 years ago
  • lookatmypix
  • threadpost
    • 0
      threadpost  

    • What's terribly sad is not just the horrible lives these animals must have had, but that their bodies will eventually decompose and disappear, but the plastic will remain for other animals to consume for thousands of years.

    • 2 years ago
  • lifestudentno83
    • 0
      lifestudentno83  

    • Politicians won't care until people die with corpses full undigested plastic. And they won't do anything until those corpses full of undigested plastic make at least 100k a year.

    • 2 years ago
  • joreveusa
    • 0
      joreveusa  

    • for this to stop everyone, and i mean everyone must rise to stop this, even if it is as simple as picking up plastic liter as u walk by it, just doing that simple act will save the birds

    • 2 years ago
  • lookatmypix
    • 0
      lookatmypix  

    • I posted this originally on the 19th of October, a day before.
      Treehugger.com wrote the article and they decided to post it here at Current on the 20th of October.
      They are the ones that wrote the article, if anything I am the duplicate because I quoted them as we, here at Current, mostly do, take a news and post it with our opinion.

      What disappoints me is not Treehugger.com, or any other member of our community and the problem is not the duplicate.
      Again my criticism is certainly not addressed to them but to Current.

      They did not feature this on top when I posted it but a day later when Treehugger.com posts it they decided to pick it.
      I am all right with not being picked, raising awareness about a just cause is what always prevails but this makes me think that it's not what we post but who posts it that gets the high spot.
      A simple message informing me that Treehugger just signed up with us which is a great deal and great advertising for both would have sufficed and would have been appreciated.
      At least just to show a bit of respect for the effort and time we spend bringing the news here.

      And yes these photos speak volumes.
      To the people that think we are getting rid of our plastic, one day it will be in our bellies too if we continue on this destructive path as originally posted here:
      http://current.com/items/91222850_chris-jordan-takes-shots-at-the-trash-patch.ht...

      Thanks very much

    • 2 years ago
  • TreeHuggerDotCom
    • 0
      TreeHuggerDotCom  
    • lookatmypix:

      hey there, lookatmypix,

      so sorry we duped you or that current didn't feature your post. and thanks so much for sharing our content here. it really does help us out a great deal.

      i posted this because our partners at Planet Green were given permission by the photographer, Chris Jordan, to use the photos and reprint the entire series, which we did not do in our TreeHugger post that you shared here. So this link from Planet Green was a little more useful than our post.

      again, sorry about that! you definitely deserve the credit for being the first to share these incredible pics on Current.

    • 2 years ago
  • lookatmypix
    • 0
      lookatmypix  
    • lookatmypix:

      The credit is all yours.
      You are the journalists not me.

      Being informed by Current is my point.

      Thank you very much for saying this, I appreciate it and continue your work, it's brilliant.

    • 2 years ago
  • bluepluto
    • 0
      bluepluto  

    • wow, like how unfortunate in all buuuut, am i the ONLY one sitting here thinking how dumb these animals are to have eaten that shit? sersly wat happened to small fish n worms? i just dont feel as bad as maybe i should.

    • 2 years ago
  • TreeHuggerDotCom
  • maizein
  • phukna
    • 0
      phukna  

    • are you telling me that all this time i have been spending money on alkaseltzer when i could just
      have had free recycling, bummer!!

    • 2 years ago
  • Monicboom
    • 0
      Monicboom  

    • I'm sorry but this doesn't look real. How is a little chick able to digest a big a$$ bottle cap and keep many of the caps, plus other things in its body. This just looks like someone dumped this crap on the corpse

    • 2 years ago
  • nodonjuan
    • 0
      nodonjuan  
    • Monicboom:

      I took a KFC meal to the pier a few years ago. I had two drumstick bones in the box. I laid the box down(I was going to take it to the trashcan when I finished the drink) when a seagull flew over to it and swallowed both drumstick bones in less than five seconds. You would be surprised what birds can get past their beak. Excluding the tail, those bones were nearly a fifth the size of the bird.

    • 2 years ago
  • TreeHuggerDotCom
  • DDukes94
    • 0
      DDukes94  

    • This is unacceptable, how could WE do this!? This just doesn't see possible. I'm sorry but if this is what our world is coming to, I can't live here any longer. I couldn't even get through all the pictures. I got to about 7 and had to close the tab.

    • 2 years ago
  • Rusteh_Bull3t
  • bailey78
    • 0
      bailey78  

    • I live on the Texas Gulf Coast and I can walk into the inner part of the Island To see this first hand . Lots of birds not just the albatross but seagulls and pelacans are also dieing from eating Plastic. I see tourest throw out fishing string and pop bottles all the time. The back side of Port Aransas is called Charley's pasture it is littered with trash from all over the world.

    • 2 years ago
  • TreeHuggerDotCom
  • Carlos_De_Tirado
  • TreeHuggerDotCom
  • Paula_Porter
  • Tampha
  • Tampha
  • pjacobs51
  • FishaHouse777
    • 0
      FishaHouse777  

    • A shocking and horrific truth, we need to realize what consumerism is doing to society and nature in general. Just remember that everyime you throw something in the garbage it's going to end up at a land fill or in the ocean...

    • 2 years ago
  • OhSee
  • idealist
  • nodonjuan
    • 0
      nodonjuan  

    • Republicans are going to say they committed suicide Or, hostile Left wing lunatics fed it to them and came back a few months later to photograph just so the Obama administration could take over the plastics industry. Sadly, much of the US will parrot it.

    • 2 years ago
  • NiemoTrance
    • 0
      NiemoTrance  
    • nodonjuan:

      No, we're going to say, how can we fix this problem without fucking something else up worse. We aren't against wild life, I love nature, we are against spontaneous and impulsive decisions.

    • 2 years ago
  • blue_blooded
  • 24French
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