Mystery of Cornish island littered with rubber bands finally solved by bird experts

Elastic bands and fishing waste collected from Mullion Island in September 2019.
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Rebecca Speare-Cole23 October 2019

The mystery behind thousands of elastic bands littering a remote uninhabited island of Cornwall has been solved by seabird experts.

Rangers who care for the colony of seabirds on Mullion Island were initially left scratching their heads by the mysterious scattering of coloured bands across the island.

But now bird experts are saying that great black-backed and herring gulls have been mistaking the bands for worms while feeding in fields on the mainland, before returning to deposit them at roosting sites on the island.

Experts monitoring the two-hectare rocky outpost found large numbers of tan, yellow and green bands among pellets regurgitated by the birds.

Mullion Island, which is off the Cornish coast 
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Small bundles of green fishing net and twine were also uncovered among the undigested food, likely mistaken by the gulls for tasty morsels floating on the surface of the sea.

Rachel Holder, area ranger for the National Trust, said: "Ingested plastic and rubber is another factor in a long list of challenges which our gulls and other seabirds must contend with just to survive.

"Despite being noisy and boisterous and seemingly common, gulls are on the decline.

"They're already struggling with changes to fish populations and disturbance to nesting sites, and eating elastic bands and fishing waste does nothing to ease their plight.

Disintegrating elastic bands on Mullion Island 
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"Places like Mullion Island should be sanctuaries for our seabirds, so it's distressing to see them become victims of human activity."

Mullion Island is a small, rocky outpost off the Lizard Peninsula, cared for by the National Trust, that provides a sanctuary for nesting seabirds including great black-backed gulls, herring gulls, cormorants and shags.

A pellet of undigested foo - a new yellow elastic band can clearly be seen within the pellet
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Despite public access to the isolated site being forbidden, the effects of human influence are increasingly evident.

The elastic bands are believed to have come from nearby horticultural fields, where they are used to tie together bunches of cut flowers.

Experts from the National Trust and West Cornwall Ringing Group clearing Mullion Island 
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One gull was found to have died after becoming caught in a 10cm fishing hook.

Mark Grantham, from the West Cornwall Ringing Group, discovered the bands.

"We first noticed the bands on a monitoring visit during the breeding season and were puzzled why there were so many and how they'd got there," he said.

Mullion Island, which is off the Cornish coast
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"To save disturbing the nesting birds, we made a special trip over in the autumn to clear the litter. Within just an hour we'd collected thousands of bands and handfuls of fishing waste.

"The gull breeding season was disappointingly poor in 2019 and these hidden human pressures are doing nothing to help our seabirds.

An expert removing a 10cm fishing hook and length of wire from the gullet of a great black-backed gull on Mullion Island 
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The numbers of great black-backed gull have fallen by 30% in recent years, while the herring gull - the species notorious for pinching food from unassuming tourists - now appears on the UK Red List of Birds of Conservation Concern.

The National Trust is calling on businesses to consider how they dispose of plastic, latex and other materials that could cause harm to wildlife.

Lizzy Carlyle, head of environmental practices at the trust, said: "Single-use materials are having an alarming impact on our country's most remote places.

"It's up to all of us to take responsibility for how we use and dispose of these items, whether we're producers or consumers."

Chris Thorne, from Greenpeace UK, said: "The human impact on our oceans is evident even in the most remote parts of the UK.

"To discover seabirds on Mullion island picking up fishing gear having mistaken it for food is sad beyond belief.

"Our Government needs to take the problem of 'ghost gear', discarded or abandoned fishing equipment, in UK waters seriously before the problem becomes even worse."