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Migrating Seabirds Are Bringing Forever Chemicals into the Arctic
New research shows how toxic chemicals hitch a ride with seabirds flying from southern latitudes to the Arctic.
Researchers assumed the birds’ PFAS load originated in the Arctic, says Don-Jean Léandri-Breton, a doctoral candidate at McGill University in Quebec and lead author of the new paper. To trace the geographic origins of the PFAS, Léandri-Breton and his team captured kittiwakes at a breeding colony in Svalbard, an archipelago near Greenland, and affixed them with solar geolocators that could identify where they winter. Previous research has also identified other seabirds carrying manufactured chemicals into the Arctic: rhinoceros auklets transport mercury to their breeding colonies in Alaska, and lesser black backed gulls pick up the pesticide DDT in Africa before heading north.
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