40kg of plastic ingested by a whale is a devastating trend
There’s a lot of terrible news out there, but yesterday a headline about the circumstances of this death of a whale in the Philippines actually broke my heart.
A juvenile Cuvier’s beaked whale washed up in Compostela Valley, showing signs of starvation and dehydration, and had been vomiting blood.
Further investivation revealed 40kg of plastic waste in its stomach, comprising shopping bags, banana plantation bags and 16 rice sacks.
This was reportedly the most amount of plastic seen by these marine biologists in a whale.
It keeps happening though.
For these species, adult males have two forward-pointing teeth which protrude from the tip of the lower jaw, but otherwise beaked whales are toothless and are thought to use suction to catch their prey.
And of course, the main threats to this marine species include the accumulation of toxic pollutants in whale tissue and organs, entanglement in fishing nets and marine litter, and noise disturbance.