Stroll along the beach at Henderson Island, and you’d struggle (a) to stroll, and (b) to even see the beach. The shoreline on this uninhabited island, part of the Pitcairn Islands in the South Pacific, should be pristine. Instead, its beaches are buried beneath an estimated 37.7 million pieces of rubbish. Henderson Island is one of the most densely plastic-polluted beach in the world.
Put the plastic to one side – if only we could – and the island itself is remarkably untouched. It has no permanent human population, no industry and very few visitors. Beyond the beaches, limestone cliffs rise above dense, tangled forests, home to species found nowhere else on Earth.
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Ten of its 51 flowering plant species, all four of its land bird species, and about a third of its known insects and gastropods are found only here – a remarkable level of diversity for an island roughly the size of Cambridge.
It has been described as one of the last two raised coral atolls in the world whose ecosystems remain relatively unaffected by human contact. But there’s a difference between being untouched by human contact and untouched by human activity.
The plastic choking its beaches is the detritus of modern life. From discarded bottles and fishing gear to toys and even toilet seats, the beaches contain up to 672 pieces of debris per square metre.
Alarmingly, this figure could easily be an underestimate. Researchers found that around 68 per cent of the rubbish was buried in the top 10 centimetres of the sand. This means that for every item of rubbish on the surface of the sand, there’s another six buried below.
The estimated weight of all this garbage is 17.6 tonnes – about the same as a fully loaded double-decker bus. And up to 27 new items can wash up per metre of beach each day.
Human activity is to blame. The island’s location doesn’t help. Henderson lies on the western boundary of the South Pacific Gyre, a vast system of circulating ocean currents that accumulates plastic debris. The current flows anticlockwise, travelling north along the coast of South America before carrying waste towards Henderson. Researchers have traced more than a quarter of the identifiable rubbish found on the island to South America, while some also comes from nearby fishing activity.
The refuse presents a huge problem for the animals that live in and around this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Plastic has been found inside the stomachs of local birds and fish, where it can lead to long-term health problems and sometimes death. It gets tangled around the legs of sea turtles, making it hard for them to swim and feed. Hermit crabs get trapped in discarded plastic containers, causing tens of thousands to starve to death every year.
For the wildlife of Henderson Island, this isn’t simply an eyesore. It’s a deadly hazard woven into the very habitat they depend on.
