Beneharo Rodríguez, Juan Bécares, Airam Rodríguez, José Manuel Arcos
Abstract
The quantification of entanglements of megafauna with plastic debris at sea is difficult to assess for several reasons, such as detection and reporting biases. We used standardized vessel based counts to describe and quantify the occurrence of marine debris entanglements in northern gannets Morus bassanus at five of its main wintering areas. We observed 34 entangled birds in total, representing 0.93% of all gannets counted (n=3672 individuals). The incidence of entanglements largely varied geographically, being exceptionally high off Mauritania (20.2% of the birds in late spring). Most birds affected were immature (1.88% compared to 0.06% in adults), which in turn represented 52.4% of all the birds. Entanglements in the lower bill mandible were the most frequent, mainly with red-colored plastic objects. Further research is urgently needed to evaluate the impact of entanglements at the population level and its occurrence in other marine species, and to seek potential solutions.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 32. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 12 April 2019.
All research outputs
#1,316,053
of 26,564,146 outputs
Outputs from Marine Pollution Bulletin
#442
of 9,744 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#10,515
of 210,027 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Marine Pollution Bulletin
#10
of 76 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 26,564,146 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 95th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 9,744 research outputs from this source. They typically receive more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 8.6. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 95% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 210,027 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 94% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 76 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
