Fulmar EcoQO monitoring goes Pacific

Photo: Stephanie Avery-Gomm from Canada and Hilbran Verstraete from Belgium dissect a fulmar during the 2011 international Fulmar workshop at IMARES on Texel. (foto Ewan Edwards)

The study was conducted by Canadian biologist Stephanie Avery-Gomm, who in October 2011 visited the Netherlands to participate in the annual Fulmar Study Workshop at IMARES on the island of Texel. This effort, to calibrate research methods internationally has been rewarding. Using the standardized methods, Stephanie was able to show that fulmars collected from beaches along the coast of British Columbia (Canada) and Washington and Oregon (USA) had ingested plastic at levels similar to that in the North Sea. The Canadian research received wide attention from the press, including in the Netherlands.