Arctic bird droppings loaded with environmental poisons, biologists say

By Jane George, Nunatsiaq News
June 15, 2010 High Arctic seabirds carry a “cocktail” of contaminants, confirms new research, which analyzed the excrement of Arctic terns and eiders nesting on a small island north of Resolute Bay. The seabirds’ cocktail is not a particularly healthy mix for the birds or the land they nest on, a team of biologists from the Canadian Wildlife Service and Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, determined. That’s because, in addition to pesticides, the seabirds are loaded with heavy metals such as cadmium and lead, which they pick up from the foods they eat. “The birds are like a funnel and they’re concentrating these contaminants,” says John Smol, a biologist from Queen’s and one of the co-authors of a study on sea birds published in the recent edition of the journal of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. The seabirds then excrete contaminants from their diet of fish and shellfish around their nesting sites, creating what Smol calls a “boomerang effect,” where contaminants found in the ocean return to the land. … Now biologists want to know more about how these contaminants travel through food chain, what the impact is, for example, when foxes eat the seabirds. … “At the end of the day, it’s a sad tale, that the oceans are polluted no matter where you are — that’s the bottom line,” Mallory says.

Arctic bird poop loaded with environmental poisons, biologists say