NWU researcher puts international spotlight on marine rubble

A visit to a remote island group approximately 430 kilometres north-east of Mauritius to collect birds’ eggs for toxic substance analyses left a researcher of the North-West University with several research prospects.
  Prof Henk Bouwman, a zoologist at the School of Environmental Sciences and Development could, after the visit, help to put an international focus on marine rubble in the Indian Ocean, which ends up on the shores of the St Brandon’s Islands by means of, amongst others, ocean currents. These islands are an atoll.

  Bouwman is also a panel member of STAP (Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which gives international policy advice on chemicals and ozone-destroying chemical substances in the environment.
  Bouwman, Dr Steven Evans, a post-doctoral student at the NWU, and Dr Nik Cole of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust of the Jersey Channel Islands visited the St Brandon’s Islands earlier this year. They also have agreements of cooperation with the University of Mauritius.
  The purpose of the visit was in the first place to determine if any pollution levels in birds’ eggs could be found in this remote place. Since the islands are situated in a very low-level pollution area that is nearly uninhabited, the eggs will immediately show any global changes in pollution trends.
  The second purpose of the visit was to count the birds on the island group. Bouwman says the birds on the islands have never been fully counted, and they found out that more than 1,2 million birds nest on the uninhabited islands. It is mainly Sooty Terns, White-winged Terns, Brown Noddies, frigate birds and a variety of wading birds, which migrated from India, that can be found on the islands.
  Bouwman says a super colony of about 600 000 Sooty Terns was counted on one island, Albatross Island. “The racket of so many birds is deafening.”
  He says they initially suspected that they would find a lot of trash and plastic waste on St Brandon’s, and this formed the third purpose of the visit. Due to these suspicions, they took along the correct protocols to qualify the waste. From plastic bottles, gas bottles, fluorescent lights, beach slops to toys and tins washed up on the shores of the islands.
  Bouwman says he suspects that it comes from Indonesia, Malaysia and other countries in the area, since the sea currents move in a direction that eventually causes the drifting trash to end up on the islands. “Many of the trademarks on the trash could be traced back to these countries.”
  Bouwman, in collaboration with Evans, Cole and researchers from Mauritius, Norway and the GEF, did a poster presentation at an international congress on marine rubbish in Hawaii, where it was the only contribution from the Indian Ocean.
  He also co-worked on an advice report for STAP on marine waste, which can be seen as a global environmental pollution problem. This report was very positively received at the management meeting of the GEF “Marine rubble has now been placed on the international agenda for development aid concerning environmental problems. The GEF’s budget for development aid for environmental projects is about $4,25 billion. The consequences that marine waste has for pollution in remote places such as the St Brandon’s Islands, where there are nearly no people, were the incitement for this report.”
  Bouwman says the report has already born fruit, since marine waste is high on the international agenda to obtain environmental funds for it. “There are also initiatives underway to clean up the rat problem on certain islands at St Brandon’s. There are no mammals on the islands, and the rats that came from ships, wiped out the bird populations.”
  He says they plan to return to St Brandon’s and similar remote islands to conduct research on whether plastic waste has a negative influence on the ecology of the islands as well as how the concentration of plastic products affects isolated oceanic islands. “The approach will be how the food web is possibly affected by this. Chemical substances in the plastic can leak and then absorbed by the coral and fish. The islands are a beautiful haven for biodiversity where many sharks, rays, sea turtles and other fantastic coral inhabitants can still be found.”