# How much plastic can fit inside a seabird?

The highest count in a 16-year watch of sable shearwaters on Lord Howe Island, Australia, was 894 plastic pieces in one fledgling in 2025. The plastic weighed 64.21 grams. The study is in Earth’s Future. The pieces counted were larger than about 1 millimetre.

Researchers monitoring sable shearwaters on Lord Howe Island found a record 894 plastic pieces weighing 64.21 grams inside one fledgling in 2025. The bird was an extreme case rather than an average individual. Earth’s Future also records a 2026 maximum of 644 pieces at 67.4 grams, a higher mass with fewer pieces.

## What would that mean for a person?

By body-weight proportion alone, that is roughly equivalent to an 80 kg person carrying about 12 kg of plastic.

## Was this a freak one-off?

The 2011 record stood for more than a decade. Then the yearly maximum rose in 2023, again in 2024, and leapt in 2025.

- 2011: 276 pieces, 64.10 g
- 2023: 403 pieces, 52.53 g
- 2024: 407 pieces, 26.30 g
- 2025: 894 pieces, 64.21 g
- 2026: 644 pieces, 67.4 g

2025 holds the highest number of pieces. 2026 holds the highest mass in the Earth’s Future series, with fewer pieces.

The 2026 pairing of 644 pieces and 67.4 grams is from that paper. The museum note does not publish it.

## A stable share, a growing extreme

Across 2010–2026, the share of sampled fledglings that contained any plastic stayed high, typically 75–85%. That rate did not climb in a simple line. What changed is the load in the worst-affected birds: more pieces, and in 2026 more mass, than anyone in the study had recorded before.

A figure such as “what percentage of birds contain plastic?” can stay fairly stable while the amount swallowed by the worst-affected individuals gets dramatically larger. The authors looked at those extreme exposures on purpose. 894 is the top of a distribution, not a portrait of every chick on the island.

## How we know

Adrift Lab has sampled sable shearwater fledglings on Lord Howe Island from 2010 through 2026. The birds are caught near fledging. Plastic is recovered from the proventriculus by stomach flushing, then washed, dried, counted and weighed. Items in this count are larger than about 1 millimetre. They are plastic pieces, not a tally of invisible particles. In the most packed birds, flushing cannot always empty the stomach. Some extreme loads were finished after the bird had died, when the rest of the plastic was taken out by hand.

The 894-piece bird is one individual from that series. Mean loads are much lower. Count and mass are separate measurements: 2024’s maximum held more pieces than 2023’s and weighed less; 2026’s maximum held fewer pieces than 2025’s and weighed more.

## What this plastic does

Plastic takes up space that would otherwise hold food. In this species it is also linked with scarring of the stomach lining, described as plasticosis, and with protein signatures of organ failure and neurodegeneration in highly exposed chicks a few months old. A 2026 mark-recapture study found that fledglings with more than 1 gram of plastic were less likely to return and breed; birds with more than 5 grams were almost never seen again. Those findings describe this population at loads far smaller than 64 grams.

## Sources

- [Abrupt Recent Increases in Plastic Ingestion by Sable Shearwaters (Ardenna carneipes)](https://doi.org/10.1029/2026EF008572)
- [Record-breaking levels of plastic found in seabirds, with almost 900 pieces found in one bird alone](https://www.nhm.ac.uk/press-office/press-releases/record-breaking-levels-of-plastic-found-in-seabirds--with-almost.html)
- [Is It Getting Worse? Fifteen Years of Data Say Yes, But Not How You’d Think](https://adriftlab.org/news/is-it-getting-worse-fifteen-years-of-data-say-yes-but-not-how-youd-think/)
- [Plastic ingestion by Flesh-footed Shearwaters (Puffinus carneipes): Implications for chick body condition and the accumulation of plastic-derived chemicals](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2013.12.020)
- [Ingested plastics reduce recruitment and survival of an Australian seabird](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2613782123)
- [Seabirds in crisis: Plastic ingestion induces proteomic signatures of multiorgan failure and neurodegeneration](https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.ads0834)