Iolo Williams Guest Blog - Grassholm - Ramsey Island and Grassholm - Ramsey Island and Grassholm

6 Nov 2014

Naturalist and wildlife TV presenter Iolo Williams accompanied us to our Grassholm reserve last month to film an item on plastic pollution for BBC Autumnwatch that was aired last week. Here Iolo tells us about his personal take on the day

Generally, a visit to Grassholm Island, a lump of rock 8 miles off the coast of Pembrokeshire, is one of life's great pleasures. Home to nearly 40,000 breeding pairs of gannets, it is an ornithological spectacle not to be missed, but in mid-October, I accompanied a team from the RSPB's Ramsey Island reserve and Exeter University on a mercy mission to free birds that had become entangled in discarded fishing nets.

For almost 200 years, Grassholm's gannets have gathered seaweed and other plant material from the surface of the ocean to construct their mound-like nests. Unfortunately, over the past few decades, nets discarded by fishing boats and domestic plastic waste has formed the bulk of their nesting material, so much so that by early autumn, Grassholm now resembles an abandoned landfill site. Juveniles and adults alike become tangled up in this pot pourri of plastics and without the RSPB's end-of-season mercy mission, dozens of birds will die.

The sea was mercifully calm for our crossing and upon landing, it became apparent that this was a late season with hundreds of birds still present on the island. Having donned our protective gloves and goggles, we spread out to cover as much of the island as we could and within less than a minute, we came across our first victim.

Unfortunately, we had arrived too late to save an adult bird that had become so entangled in monofilament netting that it couldn't flap one of its wings or move either of its legs. Along with dozens of others, it had died a slow, lingering death. Nearby was a juvenile caught by its leg and an adult whose leg was hanging on by virtue of a single tendon. These, along with 45 others, were the lucky ones as they were all cut free, including a juvenile whose webbed foot came off in my hand as I attempted to untangle the netting. For more than 60 others, our visit had come too late.

It was heartbreaking to see the effects that man's wastefulness is having on our largest seabird. 98% of the plastic waste on Grassholm comes from the fishing industry and certainly they and the world's governments must work together to find solutions to this global problem. However, some of the plastic waste is of domestic origin and this means that each and every one of us needs to think about the amount of plastic we use daily and how we dispose of it.

Adult with nesting material - G Morgan

For far too long, we have used the marine environment as a dumping ground for human waste. This cannot continue. For the sake of Grassholm's gannets and all marine creatures, we must act and act quickly.

RSPB would like to thank Iolo and the BBC for covering this trip on Autumnwatch and to Venture Jet for once again delivering us safely to and from the island