Seabird deaths: sticky substance identified
The sticky substance which has killed seabirds on the south coast is an oil additive according to academics, writes Jane Deith.
Birds, mostly guillemots, have been washing up on beaches from Sussex to Cornwall covered in the white, odourless, glue-like oil. It sticks their feathers together so they cannot fly or keep warm.
Initial analysis by scientists with the Environment Agency identified it as a kind of refined mineral oil. The agency has asked a lab to do further tests to pin it down.
But in the meantime experts at Plymouth University have tested the oil and announced it is a form of polyisobutane (PIB). This is a lubricating additive used in oils to improve performance. It is sticky and semi-solid, which explains why it congealed on the birds’ feathers.
More than 300 affected birds have been treated at an RSPCA centre near Taunton in Somerset. People have been donating margarine, which staff have found helps break down the oil when it is massaged into the birds’ feathers. Then the birds are cleaned with washing-up liquid and given fluids and fish.
Sixty birds have now been moved to another RSPCA centre in west Sussex, where they are being fed up and slowly released into pools, where they can regain their strength. Eventually the RSCPA hopes to release them back into the wild.
Mystery still surrounds where the oil additive came from. The Maritime and Coastguard Agency says it need a definite confirmation of what the oil is, before it can work backwards to try to identify the vessel it might have come from.
It sent up a plane to search the south coast last week, and used satellite imaging, but couldn’t find a spill.
Thankfully the number of birds being found covered in oil is falling, although reports of contaminated birds have come in from the Isle of Wight and as far away as Ostend in Belgium.