CANBERRA, Dec. 6 (Xinhua) -- More than half a million hermit crabs have been killed by human litter, an Australian study has found.
The study, published by the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), found that 500,000 hermit crabs died from being trapped in plastic containers that washed up on the Cocos, a territory of Australia consisting of 27 small islands in the Indian Ocean.
A further 60,000 died on Henderson Island, which lies in the South Pacific between New Zealand and South America.
Henderson Island was dubbed the world's garbage dump in April after photos of its beaches strewn with millions of pieces of washed-up plastic spread around the world.
Jennifer Lavers, the lead author of the IMAS study, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that she was "struck by how many open plastic containers contained hermit crabs, both dead and alive" during visits to Henderson.
"We decided to do additional surveys across a range of sites of how many containers there were, including how many were open, how many were in a position likely to trap crabs, and how many contained trapped crabs," she said.
"These results are shocking but perhaps not surprising, because beaches and the vegetation that fringes them are frequented by a wide range of wildlife."
Researchers found that average survival of hermit crabs starved of water was typically between five to nine days.
Lavers and her team are planning to study the impact of debris on hermit crabs at other locations around the world.
"Our study is the first to document the mortality of hermit crabs due to beach debris, but the broader global picture remains unknown," she said.
"However, it is likely that the mortality of hermit crabs across the world's beaches is substantial, and further investigation is required to inform a broader understanding of the scale and implications of their loss."
