Sticky Seabird Disaster Hits Second Wave Of PIB ‘Glue-like’ Deaths

The sticky seabird tragedy continues in the United Kingdom. A few days ago, UK media began to report that a second wave of ocean-going birds, especially guillemots, have been washing up on beaches in Devon and Cornwall. Added to the over 300 guillemots, razorbills, puffins, and other seabirds found washed ashore in February, the death toll has now passed 1,000.

There are also over 200 injured seabirds currently being rescued by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and the South Devon Seabird Trust.

Although the disaster is still unfolding, the chemical involved in the bird kill has been identified as polyisobutene (PIB), a clear sticky chemical that is currently legally discharged into the ocean when ships wash out their tanks. The glue-like sticky substance coats feathers, preventing seabirds from being able to dive or fish. As a result, the sticky seabirds die a lingering death if they don’t wash up where they can be rescued.

After the new sticky seabird reports started pouring in last Saturday, the RSPCA called for the UK parliament to ban the discharge of PIB. Without a ban, they predict a 40 percent increase in the use of the deceptively clear glue-like chemical in the next four years.

And they say that the sticky substance is already killing an unprecedented number of seabirds. In addition to the birds actually found dead or dying over a wide area of the UK’s southwest coast, many more birds are thought to be dead in the open sea where they will never be found.

According to the UK’s Guardian, over 500 seabirds were impacted between Jan. 29 and Feb. 6 alone, when the birds were discovered along a 200 mile stretch of shore running from Sussex to Cornwall. There’s some speculation that the new spill is more of the PIB from the very same unidentified ship. A change in wind, tide, or both may have provided an illusion that the spill was gone, when it had actually just changed direction so that for a few weeks the birds were no longer being washed ashore.

A Plymouth University geochemist Steve Rowland told reporter Jessica Aldred, “Whether this is the original spill washing around I don’t know but the substance seems to be the same as the January-February spill. There has been a change in wind direction and maybe this is the same material.”

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has stated that they probably won’t be able to locate the ship that spilled the chemical, because it’s so commonly used. The investigation into the February spill was closed without a result.

Meanwhile, sticky seabirds continue to wash ashore.

[black guillemot photo by D. Gordon E. Robertson via Wikiepedia Commons]