Such a special night at the ceremony of the 60th Wildlife Photographer of the Year awards at the Natural History Museum in London. My image titled ‘A diet of Deadly Plastic’ was awarded winner of ‘Oceans: The Bigger Picture’. This category is close to my heart and reports on the vital influence and importance of marine environment for us or the planet. The image shows a mosaic of shapes and colours that looks innocuous enough, until you realize that it is composed of 403 pieces of plastic that were removed from the digestive tract of a flesh-footed shearwater. The dead seabird washed up on the shore of Lord Howe Island off the east coast of Australia. The grim discovery was made by researchers with the Adrift Lab, a group that brings together biologists from around the world to study the impacts of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems. We are currently putting at least 8 million tonnes of plastics into our oceans every year.
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