Investigating Shotgun shell and wad waste around Humboldt Bay

Presentation Year

2022

College or Department

College of Natural Resources & Sciences

Short Description of your Research or Creative Project (700 characters or less)

Shotguns are often used for hunting and when they are fired, they produce a plastic wad and shell that are ejected and often left behind. In order to estimate the abundance of shotgun wads and shells, eight randomly selected sites around Humboldt Bay were sampled once each during the month of March 2022. The sites sampled included the beach and bay side of the Samoa Peninsula, Arcata, and Eureka. At these selected sites, 400-m2 was inspected for wads and shells. While sampling at each site, trash was collected and weighed. Only one shotgun wad and one shell was collected at two different sites, for an abundance of 0.25 wads and shells per 100 m2, and an average of 0.26 kg of trash per 100 m2

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Permission to Publish Work

Yes