Plastics and plastic-associated contaminants in Northern fulmars from the Labrador Sea

Thirty-one northern fulmars (Fulmarus glacialis) were collected approximately 40 km off the coast of Nunatsiavut in the Labrador Sea in July 2015 as part of an Environment Canada lead project on seabirds. The birds were collected by hunters to examine ingested plastics in this recognized indicator species, and as part of a larger project to examine the potential physical and chemical impacts of ingested plastics on wildlife. To date all birds have examined for ingested debris, with all pollution found within the gut of the birds quantified using the 'Save the North Sea' protocol as developed by van Franeker et al. from IMARES in the Netherlands.Work on examining plastic-associated contaminants in the birds are ongoing. The aim of this project is to contribute to our growing understanding of the link between macro-contaminants (i.e. plastics) and micro-contaminants (i.e. chemicals), and to improve our understanding of how plastic pollution may act as a source and long-range vector for contaminants to enter the Arctic ecosystems and cycle within marine animals. There are three main objectives to this project which involve the analysis of both tissues and plastics. First, we will analyze tissues (breast muscle, brain and fat) in the birds from the low (Labrador Sea) and high (Prince Leopold Island; PLI) Arctic to investigate how marine plastic-associated contaminants relate to ingested plastic levels. These analyses will focus on both legacy and emerging contaminants of concern. Second, we will ground truth a new technique that allows non-lethal sampling of a bird's preening oil as an indicator of plastic ingestion (Hardesty et al. 2015) using preening oil from the birds collected in the Labrador Sea. Preening gland oil from birds with known plastics ingestion will be tested for phthalates to evaluate if preening gland oil sampled non-lethally can be used as an indicator of both the presence of absence of ingested plastics, and the level of plastic ingestion (i.e. abundance of pieces). Third, we will analyze the plastics found in the stomachs of fulmars collected from the Labrador Sea and PLI to quantify the types of plastics (i.e. polyethylene, polypropylene, polyvinyl chloride, polyurethane etc.) that are available for ingestion to marine biota in eastern Arctic waters, and thus impact what contaminants have the potential to bio-transfer to marine biota. Some of the above work is funding dependent.