Photos of Bird Stomachs

http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=11

by mhb • 16 years ago

158 50 16 years ago

rmorrison• 16 years ago

It seems a shame to me that nowadays "protecting the environment" is virtually synonymous with "curbing CO2 emissions", which means that serious issues like ocean pollution get very little attention.

dbz• 16 years ago

We have serious problems to fix: like the pile of garbage the size of Texas that is sitting in the middle of our ocean.

I couldn't find a good article, and I am petty sure the wiki-has some incorrect data displayed, but I'll leave it to the curious to research =p

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

itistoday• 16 years ago

There is an excellent video of reporters from VBS.TV going out with a researcher to visit this place. Very well worth watching despite its length:

http://www.vbs.tv/newsroom/toxic-garbage-island-1-of-3--4

amock• 16 years ago

If you read that article it says that the patch being the size of Texas is conjecture by the media.

parenthesis• 16 years ago

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-...

matwood• 16 years ago

Totally agree! Mercury and other heavy metals make it potentially dangerous to eat much fish anymore.

DaniFong• 16 years ago

Not that coal is the source of all of our ills, but I have read that to elevated levels of mercury pervading the environment are primarily from coal plant stack emissions. Given this, I wonder why it isn't a diplomatic issue between, say, Japan and the US or Japan and China?

gamache• 16 years ago

Eat young fish. Typically, in a given body of water, mercury level in a fish is directly proportional to its age. Avoid, if you like, large fish (e.g. tuna, marlin, swordfish, shark) and small fish which take a long time to mature (orange roughy, grouper, etc), but don't be afraid of all seafood.

Coincidentally, eating small fish is much better for the marine ecosystem as well. They are much more difficult to overfish (not that humans haven't figured out how).

More info on mercury levels in seafood: http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/Product-SpecificInformati...

aresant2• 16 years ago

They should post these at every park / beach / national forest parking lot in place of the current "Please don't litter" signs.

jimmyjim• 16 years ago

Great idea, I'm all for it. You seriously ought to contact the right people and try to make this a reality, I think it would prove to be very effective and actually bring about some positive change.

chanux• 16 years ago

I already emailed the artist to see if we can get at least one photo under creative commons (if they aren't already).

Hope we can make a "Do not litter" poster with that which anyone can use.

aresant2• 16 years ago

I would sponsor this out of pocket in a heart beat:

a) Get a bunch of those posters printed up.

b) Put together a candid http://www.thefuntheory.com/ type experiment documented on video showing how behavior changes with an in-your-face message like this.

c) Let the YouTubes do the rest - drive people back to the CC licensed poster, have pushed out in local communities.

fuzzmeister2• 16 years ago

On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about everything you're throwing away. If you can get people to truly understand the consequences of what they're doing, the majority of them will change their ways.

pbhjpbhj2• 16 years ago

Have they also put alongside them recycling cans? Changed their suppliers to ones that use reuse, recycle and manufacture with recyclable materials?

anamax2• 16 years ago

> On a related note, my school (Washington University in St. Louis) has recently changed the labels on all trash cans from "Trash" to "Landfill." It's amazing how much that little switch makes you think carefully about everything you're throwing away.

And what do people do differently?

BTW - the above seems to assume that the US has a landfill shortage. It does, but only by choice.

The US tries to recycle some things that don't make economic sense to recycle today. It would be better to simply collect and store these things until it does make sense to reclaim them. Landfills are ideally suited to this purpose.

Yes, it's dumb to recycle when it doesn't make economic sense. Subsidies are waste. You'd think that folks who claim to care about waste would understand that and actually walk their talk.

What am I thinking? People do things because of how it makes them feel.

ximeng• 16 years ago

His other photos are good too.

For example:

http://chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php?id=9

elpuri• 16 years ago

Some pieces of the Running the Numbers series are currently on display in the Museum of Science in Boston (which is otherwise a joke except the probability machine in the math room which is really cool :)).

mbenjaminsmith• 16 years ago

Does anyone know if other animals do this? Is that the presence of garbage combined with the birds' inability to taste plastic as well as their inability to regurgitate? That seems like an extreme environmental 'mismatch'. Sad.

frou_dh• 16 years ago

Fuckin' bottle caps, man

metamemetics• 16 years ago

for real, reusable bottles are great. Though I suppose there is some debate over bisphenol A in nalgene bottles and it's just one more thing to carry around for some people.

wooster2• 16 years ago

I carry a metal bottle, and NALGENE is now moving to stainless steel bottles.

It would've been great if we'd just skipped all the steps between canteens and going back to metal bottles, though. That whole 80's-00's trend of making products disposable to increase sales and profit margins was really a waste.

wenbert• 16 years ago

Also cheap plastic lighters. I didn't expect it. It's probably because birds are attracted to "colorful" objects.

noisedom• 16 years ago

Wow, this drawing makes a little more sense now.

http://www.mattfurie.com/032009big.php?id=03

rjett• 16 years ago

Hmmm... the first thing I thought of when I saw this post was "beware the ides of march."

browngeek• 16 years ago

Related videos from TED talks:

- Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic (http://www.ted.com/talks/capt_charles_moore_on_the_seas_of_p...)

- Chris Jordan pictures some shocking stats (http://www.ted.com/talks/chris_jordan_pictures_some_shocking...)

aaronbrethorst• 16 years ago

To quote Fight Club: "very modern art."

how depressing.

Rayzar• 16 years ago

Truly disturbing, makes you wonder what other effects of pollution are out there that we won't get to see until it's too late.

tomerico• 16 years ago

In a way, these birds are cleaning our oceans...

davidmurphy• 16 years ago

This is exceptionally powerful. I will now be aware of and care about this issue for the rest of my life. Thanks for sharing.

whyenot• 16 years ago

I saw the remains myself when I visited Midway a few years ago. It's very shocking, especially the large number of disposable lighters... where do they all come from? Laysan Albatross chicks on Midway are also dying because those in nests near buildings eat the flaking paint and end up with lead poisoning.

Thankfully, things are actually improving. Laysan numbers have increased in recent censuses and the species appears to be on the rebound. Thanks maybe in part to President Bush including Midway and several other atolls used by albatross in the National Marine Monument that he created.

During the breeding season every flat surface is covered with birds. It's one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.

kingsley_202• 16 years ago

I'd be interested in understanding what the ethical issue at hand actually is. Is it: a) the unintentional destruction of life b) the possible reduction of biodiversity or c) the fact that animals are being killed that don't supply human food chains?

s3graham• 16 years ago

I'm not sure what you mean by "ethical", but I'll go for "d) All of the above" as being unfortunate from my perspective.

kingsley_202• 16 years ago

What are people so shocked and distraught about? Most of us contribute to the destruction of life by eating meat and to the reduction of biodiversity by occupying many environmental niches that would have otherwise harbored other species. Frankly, c is not an ethical issue for me, as death is an essential part of life, and it always contributes to some food chain.

I'm not able to make the connection between some dead birds that happen to have eaten a human contaminant and all the outrage/shock etc in this discussion. So I'm hoping that someone will connect it for me.

hariis• 16 years ago

A life is destroyed due to human carelessness and/or irresponsibility

10ren• 16 years ago

This is horrific, unbelievable.

I'll probably be downvoted for this, but I can't help but think that precisely because it's killing them, it exerts an enormous selection pressure on albatrosses. Nature is also cruel.

noonespecial• 16 years ago

On the other hand, you might consider that nature is cleaning the garbage patch.

We've given up on being able to clean the garbage patch saying its impractical to go out there and fish such widely dispersed trash from the ocean. By this, of course, we mean "too expensive".

Nature has dispatched the cleaning crew to do it for us at an almost unimaginable cost. The albatross seems an almost perfect instrument for flying out there, spotting, and picking up exactly as much trash as it can carry and then returning it to land.

Hopefully the selection pressure you speak of will yield a method of collection that doesn't cost a whole bird for each load.

andrew1• 16 years ago

Anyone know why an albatross would feed this stuff to its chicks? I don't mean that in terms of comparing an albatross to a human (as in, I can tell that a bottle cap is probably not a good thing to eat) but comparing it to other animals - a cat or an eagle say - that come into contact with a lot of the same objects on land. Is it a question of intelligence (that albatrosses are just not very bright) or maybe desperation (if it looks like it might be food and you can't find anything else it's worth a try)?

borism• 16 years ago

it's a question of feeding behavior:

- cat or eagle specifically look and wait for prey - albatross and other marine birds and animals do look for prey as well, but they don't have the luxury of wait or the ability to choose what parts do they eat

darshan• 16 years ago

From the article: "[The parents] soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young."

In other words, the albatross fly over the water, and when they see small, colored things floating near the surface, they assume they're small fish or other edible things. Up until quite recently (on the scale of albatross evolution), this was a pretty safe assumption.

So, no, low intelligence and/or desperation aren't implicated; rather, it's a matter of habitat and how prey are identified.

nebula• 16 years ago

That sounds like a decent explanation, but won't they sense that something is wrong when they touch these objects? I mean stuff like plastic caps are stiff and hard, while fish are not. May be the fact that they evolved to swallow their food instead of chewing it may make it harder for them to distinguish a fish from a plastic cap even when it's in their beak?

jcl• 16 years ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the reason might not have something to do with the fact that the birds do not chew their food but rather swallow it whole.

It may also have something to do with the bird's gizzard: some species of birds regularly consume rocks to grind food in their gizzards. It's possible that the plastic items are substitutes for the rocks.

From the Wikipedia article, it sounds like the plastic is not the worst threat to the albatrosses, but it's certainly a graphic one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albatross#Threats_and_conservat...

maxklein• 16 years ago

A bit of info for the curious: http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/Auk/v098n04/p0839-p0841.pdf

Scroll down to "Ingestion of Plastics by Laysan Albatross"

Photos of Bird Stomachs

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