If it smells like food, and looks like food, it must be food right?
Not in the case of ocean-faring birds that are sometimes found with bellies full of plastic. But very little research examines why birds make the mistake of eating plastic in the first place.
To learn exactly what marine plastic debris smells like, the scientists put beads made of the three most common types of plastics debris --- high-desnty polyethylene, low-density polyethylene, and poly-propylene--- into the ocean at Monterey Bay and Bodega Bay, off the California coast.
