Image of the Day: Plastic Nests

Seabirds in Norway use fishing debris to construct nests.

Written byAmy Schleunes

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ABOVE: Gannets rest in nests made of discarded fishing materials on Norway’s Runde Island.
SIMON J. PIERCE, MARINE MEGAFAUNA FOUNDATION, WWW.NATURETRIPPER.COM

Simon Pierce, the founder of the Marine Megafauna Foundation, recently documented heaps of plastic draped on the rocks of Runde Island, which lies off the southern coast of Norway.

“I could see some colour among the gannets’ nests on the cliff, and I was pretty sure there weren’t supposed to be bright colours in seabird nests, so I bumped my shutter speed up and hoped for the best,” Pierce, who is also a wildlife photographer, says in a press release. “When I downloaded the pictures to my computer later, I just gasped. The nests were overflowing with fishing debris.”

Seaweed and floating grass are gannets’ natural nest-building materials, according to the statement, but 97 percent of their nests on Runde Island now contain manmade debris that can entangle and kill ...

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Meet the Author

Amy Schleunes
A former intern at The Scientist, Amy studied neurobiology at Cornell University and later earned her MFA in creative writing from the University of Iowa. She is a Los Angeles–based writer, editor, and communications strategist who collaborates on nonfiction books for Harper Collins and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and also teaches writing at Johns Hopkins University CTY. Her favorite projects involve sharing the insights of science and medicine.
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