Study on plastic in stomachs of northern fulmars and other seabirds in relation to the containers lost from MSC Zoe in early January 2019

Stomach contents of dead birds beached along the Dutch Wadden Sea and North Sea coast during 2019 were investigated for the potential presence of plastics lost from containers in the MSC Zoe incident, 1 to 2 January 2019. The focus was on the detection of industrial polyethylene (PE) pellets and Polystyrene (PS) microbeads as were spilled during the incident. For northern fulmars reference material from earlier years was available. Looking at the presence of PE pellets and PS beads in 2019 in comparison to earlier years there was no direct effect of the container incident. For some species no adequate reference data were available, however, no plastics similar to those lost during the incident were found.