PLASTIC TRASH AFFECTS WILDLIFE COMPARISON OF FOOD INGESTED BY LAYSAN ALBATROSS CHICKS IN TWO REGIONS OF THE PACIFIC Research by Lindsay Young and her colleagues compared the food ingested by Laysan albatross chicks in two populations, more than 1900 kilometres apart in the Pacific. Their data show that, while both populations consumed roughly the same amount of actual food, chicks in the western Pacific near Kure ingested 10 times more plastic than chicks near Oahu. In addition, the Kure chicks had 4 times as many plastic pieces and these pieces were, on average, twice as large as those of the Oahu chicks. A comparison of the foraging areas for these two populations gives a clue as to why the Kure birds eat so much more plastic than the Oahu birds.