Plastic Killed Sea Turtle In Australia, Marine Biologist Predicts

SYDNEY -- A marine biologist says a green sea turtle that washed ashore in Australia likely starved to death after swallowing 317 pieces of plastic.

Rochelle Ferris with Australian Seabird Rescue says a necropsy on the turtle found fishing line, packing tape, lolly pop sticks, lids and a variety of plastic bags.

She said the turtle's digestive system became impacted with material it couldn't digest and the animal slowly starved.

The 15-inch (40 centimeter) turtle was found earlier this month at Ballina, on the New South Wales far north coast.

Ferris said she was aware of 40 to 50 turtles suffering from plastic ingestion each year, but this was "the worst case we've seen."

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Comments

[Jay from Ottawa]

02:31 PM on 07/18/2011

And then they try to convince us that the only way out of this mess is to put a stop to all regulations effecting businesses around the world. Go ahead, dump all your garbage in the ocean, it's sure cheaper than getting rid of it properly now is it... Best way to stop cruelty to our sea dwelling friends appears to be to make sure we have no sea dwelling friends left to be cruel to.

[Kim0330]

03:25 PM on 07/06/2011

The sad thing is, is that this can be prevented. If we all got off of our lazy behinds and actually used the garbage can instead of throwing our trash on the ground it would help.

[olitenup]

09:03 AM on 07/04/2011

Sad, sad, sad. It is almost over-whelming what a bunch of ugly arses we are for trashing our planet.

[va23]

12:00 PM on 07/01/2011

Yet another sad victim of our disastrous impact on this planet.

If you have 8 minutes to spare, please watch this presentation given by Charles Moore on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is shocking to see that parts of the Pacific now look as a great soup of degraded plastic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrAShtolieg

[Debbie338]

03:04 PM on 07/01/2011

Thanks for the link. Mind-boggling. I knew about the Patch, but this is more detail than I've seen before.

[farleft]

02:45 AM on 07/01/2011

May I recommed "Flosametrics" by Curtis Ebesmeyer? A well written book on the subject.

[mlaiuppa]

02:23 AM on 07/01/2011

And it will continue as long as we use the ocean as a toilet, a sewer and a garbage dump. There is garbage floating around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean larger than the state of Texas. It can be seen from space. That is obscene.

The best thing that could happen to this planet is for humans to become extinct. Hopefully it will happen before we kill off everything else.

[mskermit]

09:42 PM on 06/30/2011

I hope and pray that we humans can start to clean up the plant on a gobal scale, before the pollution kills all of us off humans and anilmals alike.

[Hazel128]

08:50 PM on 06/30/2011

This just makes me sick. ugh...

[miloiki]

06:58 PM on 06/30/2011

We need to ban lollypop sticks, plastic forks, bags, straws, cups, shoe laces, bottle caps and tops, yogurt containers, soda 6 pack holders, stir sticks, plastic coffee cups, toothbrushes, hair curlers, plastic boxes, hair pins, pencils, aluminum cans, paper plates, pill bottles, soup cans, and everything else. Now. Hurry up.

[Deep Thinking Man]

06:27 PM on 06/30/2011

garbage from fishing boats, as well as the garbage that we pitch, is killing the animals and Nature in general...we must analyze better ways of disposing wastes to eliminate this killing !!!!!!

[Moose Luck 99]

06:19 PM on 06/30/2011

Wooden popsicle sticks are good why plastic?

What we need is Bill Gates and the Rothschild wimps to get barges in the ocean shredding the plastic zone and MICROWAVING IT INTO DIESEL FUEL!

[singsingsing]

05:42 PM on 06/30/2011

Read recently, every square mile of ocean on the planet has about 6,000 dime sized pieces of plastic floating it it. Also, it has been reported that every piece of plastic EVER manufactured still exists in one form or another.

[mlaiuppa]

02:25 AM on 07/01/2011

You can go to beaches where the sand is made of tiny pieces of plastic.

[threnodymarch]

05:22 PM on 06/30/2011

There's no other way to say it: this is just incredibly depressing.

[jackieoclassist]

04:29 PM on 06/30/2011

This is terrible, and nothing compared to the amount of plastic seagulls ingest and feed to their young. We managed to find the one substance that doesn't go away and make it into the item that we consider most disposable. What an awful species we have turned out to be. I'm beginning to hope that we go extinct before we have a chance to kill off everything around us.

[Tammi K]

03:48 PM on 06/30/2011

We need to reduce our garbage output & also the world's population growth. Otherwise, things are gonna get grosser and grosser til we all die.