These are beautiful images of an amazing bird.
And this is the story behind its greatest enemy – plastic waste, floating dangerously in our oceans. How will we ever clean it up?
In 2008 I had the good fortune to visit Hawaii, and coincidentally came across the story of an English film-maker who had gone to Hawaii and found the albatross chicks dying of mal-nutrition because their stomachs were filled with plastic debris, accidentally fed to them by their parents who had scooped up the plastic with the fish they were catching. 
This photographer, Rebecca Hosking, came back to England and persuaded her home
village to ban plastic carrier bags – something that was quickly adopted by other towns. Now, supermarkets across Britain are actively discouraging the use of plastic bags in favour of the ‘bag-for-life’ made from hessian. Rebecca’s fim ‘Message in the Waves’ was shown on BBC Natural History Channel.
The RSPB asks for used stamps to raise money for equipment for the long-line fishing vessels, which scares the albatross away so that they will not dive for the fish being hauled into the boat, thereby escaping death themselves.
It is interesting to me that Coleridge’s poem ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’ which tells of the sailor who carried an albatross around his neck as a punishment for killing the albatross, is so poignantly relevant today. We carry the dreadful burden of responsibility for destroying these magnificent birds, and all the other marine life, by allowing our oceans to become a death trap from our plastic and toxic waste.
Maybe plastic waste needs to be reduced at source – by the reduction of manufactured products like plastic bags – but until this can be achieved, retailers can change to paper or biodegradable bags and consumers can just stop using plastic wherever possible. Our grandparents didn’t have plastic bags – they had hand-made shopping bags which were attractive, practical and durable, and brown paper bags; and they would take re-fillable containers for milk or cider, oil or vinegar, or paraffin.
Latest discovery:
Bug munches plastic trash, possibly cleaning oceans
Published: 29 March, 2011, 13:31 RT news on – https://rt.com/news/sci-tech/bug-plastic-cleaning-oceans/
Image from state-of-affairs.org
Nature may have found a way to dispose of the huge amounts of plastic garbage, which has been increasingly accumulating in the oceans. A small bacteria feeding on it has been discovered. This may be a boon or a bane for the aquatic environment.
The bacteria was discovered through electron microscopy on plastic items sampled at the Sargasso Sea, an area in the North Atlantic, where debris tends to stack up due to local currents.
The primitive organisms live in pits in the plastic and appear to feed on it as well, says marine microbiologist Tracy Mincer of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
“They look like you took a hot barbecue briquette and threw it into snow,” Nature News cites Mincer as saying. “You see this melting bit all around the outside of the cells, and they’re just burrowing into the plastic.”
The specialized bug is not encountered in other environment, like surrounding seawater or seaweed.
Scientists are not yet sure whether these organisms will eventually do more good than harm in dealing with pollution. If their digestion products are environmentally-friendly, then it would mean that nature has found a new way to limit the damage humanity does.
But plastic contains numerous toxins, and the bacteria may be introducing those into the food chain by feeding on it and then becoming food for larger organism.
AVIA..............................................wendy salter 
I simply want to say I am just all new to blogging and really liked this web-site. More than likely I’m planning to bookmark your site . You amazingly come with tremendous articles. Regards for sharing with us your web-site.
A great web publication post, I simply given this onto a workfellow who was doing a little analysis on that. along with he in fact bought me dinner because I found it for him. . So let me reword that: Thank you for the treat! But yeah Thnkx for taking the time to talk about this, I feel strongly concerning it in addition to love learning further on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your website with further details? It is highly helpful for me. Big thumb up for this web page!
Great write-up, I’m regular visitor of one’s blog, maintain up the excellent operate, and It is going to be a regular visitor for a lengthy time.
Merci bien!
I was really excited because I love learning about climate change and how it effects us, animals, and the world.
The security guards that came to your country belong to poor families, they just came for money, they did not know what they were getting themselves into, and I hope you understand that.
One solution is to halt the production of plastic at source. Another is for all the ‘I’s in the world to do what they can at a real grass-roots level – avoid/re-use/dispose/recycle. Another is for public areas to be cleaned of plastic rubbish by self-motivated volunteers. One of the worst aspects of plastic refuse is that it can be blown about and it floats, which is how these ocean gyres come about. I have seen supermarket plastic carrier bags stuck in the tops of trees. Most of what I pick up is take-away food containers, bottles, cans and cigarette packets.
it is a tough situation, it will take a lot of money and world unification to clean that up, here is a joke I saw about landfills,
http://ponderingstuff.com/2011/05/08/animals-in-landfills/
so horrific and destructive.
many years ago i saw a pelican struggling in the surf, so much so that i had the advantage over him and pulled him to shore. a plastic six-pack holder was around his neck and securely held in place by fishing line and a hook. the dear soul allowed me to take the time to untangle him, he was exhausted.
that was just one bird……so much wildlife is destined to perish slowly and painfully out of sight.
what s individuals, can we do?
xo
debra
I work on the theory that we can do whatever comes in front of us – whether that is saving stamps for the RSPB or putting some pennies in a box, or praying, or joining an expedition or rescuing one at a time like you did – or broadcasting news like I do, or, or, or…