Word: laysan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Biologist Stewart Fefer and three colleagues from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had eagerly anticipated their assignment: a trip to Laysan, a 960-acre island about 1,000 miles northwest of Honolulu. They were to study some of the 14 million seabirds that nest there, and they looked forward to their stay on what they assumed would be an island paradise with pristine beaches. What they discovered came as a shock. The sands of Laysan were strewed with an unbelievable variety of plastic trash. While doing his bird-watching chores, Fefer cataloged thousands of pellets as well...
...debris that despoiled Laysan's beaches had been washed ashore by the waters of the Pacific, which like other oceans is becoming increasingly fouled by plastic flotsam. But while the floating and beached plastic is unquestionably an eyesore, the problem goes far beyond aesthetics. At the Sixth International Ocean Disposal Symposium in Pacific Grove, Calif., last month, scientists reported that plastic trash is causing injury and death to countless marine animals that feast on it or become ensnared in it. Says Ecologist David Laist, of the Marine Mammal Commission: "Plastics may be as ! great a source of mortality among marine...