A new study found the amount of seabirds that have swallowed plastic that settled in their gut was vastly underestimated in previous research.
Published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the new study found 90 percent of seabirds have plastic in their guts. Previous studies only placed that figure at 29 percent, according to The Associated Press.
"Plastic in seabirds is ubiquitous, and it's increasing," study leader Chris Wilcox, Australia's federal research agency, also known as CSIRO, told BBC News. "Because exposure to plastic turns out to be a strong predictor of how much plastic the birds have in them; that is, the more plastic they're exposed to, the more they ingest - this implies that if we reduce the amount of plastic going into the oceans, you would expect all these species to essentially respond.
"And this makes this problem different from something like climate change. It ought to be relatively easy to fix."
The researchers estimated that all seabirds, or at least 99 percent of the animals, will have plastic in their guts by the end of their lives.
Jenna Jambeck, a plastic waste expert at the University of Georgia who was not involved in the study, said the research means an overall reduction of sea plastic will help individual seabirds.
"It illustrates that if we implement solutions to reduce plastic input into the oceans, we can reduce impacts to individual seabirds," Jambeck told BBC News. "Solutions include improving solid waste management where it is lacking, and also working upstream on product redesign and materials substitution moving towards a more circular system."
