The 20 advanced undergraduate students of this year’s Marine Biodiversity & Conservation program recently completed a high seas management proposal for the Sargasso Sea, a North Atlantic region increasingly recognized for its strong ecological importance and economic impact.

The abundance of plastic debris in our world’s oceans has become increasingly well documented, thanks in part to decades of intensive data collection by SEA scientists and SEA Semester students. But determining just how much plastic has entered the ocean, and where it all goes, remains a challenge.

A new study co-authored by Dr. Kara Lavender Law, SEA Research Professor of Oceanography, sheds new light on one piece of this puzzle: Can plastics from the bellies of deceased seabirds provide an accurate sense of pollution levels in a given ocean environment?