Scientists have discovered birds eating a party balloon and playing with a plastic bottle, as well as finding a soft drink can 1,000 metres under the sea while on a voyage off Tasmania’s coast.

Researchers were 100 kilometres out to sea when they saw birds interacting with a rubber balloon, one with a string trailing from its mouth. On the same day, the scientists saw a group of albatrosses picking up the plastic bottle up and throwing it around,” she said.

The balloons were spotted in an area where several species of seabirds, had been observed less than an hour earlier, including albatrosses and petrels. ‘When these balloons burst, the pieces float on the surface where they may be eaten by seabirds mistakenly identifying them as food items”, Dr Woehler, ‘Plastic ingestion is a global conservation issue for seabirds, and the presence of these balloons so far from land shows how easily our actions can adversely affect seabirds and other marine life far from land.

Dr Woehler said it was not the first time he had seen party balloons at sea, after researchers discovered two groups of balloons hundreds of kilometres off the coast of New South Wales in September.  “It’s affecting every marine species in the marine environment,” he said.

bottle found at 1000 metres

Photos: CSIRO