When we think of trash in the ocean, we often worry about the safety of smaller sea animals like fish, turtles and birds who can easily choke on/get tangled in the debris. We don’t, however, give much consideration to whales in this scenario – after all, it would seemingly require a lot of trash to take down one of the ocean’s largest creatures. Alas, as National Geographic reports, it can take as little as one piece of plastic to kill a whale.
A nearly 50-foot-long sei whale was alone and far from the ocean when she swam to the Elizabeth River this past summer. Scientists tried to follow the whale to see if they could help her, but she died within a couple days anyway. After cutting the whale open, researchers soon identified the problem: the whale had swallowed a jagged piece of a DVD case. The sharpness sliced the whale’s stomach, inhibiting her from eating properly.
“It was a very long and painful decline,” said Susan Barco, an aquarium researcher who studied the whale. “It makes me very sad that a piece of plastic that was not disposed of properly ended up killing a whale. It was a preventable death.”
The only thing that makes this story even sadder is the news that it’s hardly an isolated incident. Scientists have recorded a rise in whales dying because of garbage. Not only do dangerous pieces get lodged in whales’ stomachs, some whales slowly die of starvation when they erroneously eat trash instead of real food.
Knowing just how many whales have trash in their bellies is difficult to gauge since scientists don’t ultimately recover the bodies of most whales. According to a study conducted last year, though, as many as one-third of whales ingest garbage, with more than half of all whale species eating trash. Many whales mistakenly identify floating trash as food like squid. Anecdotally, marine biologist Frances Gulland recalled a dead male sperm whale he encountered with more than 400 pounds of trash in his stomach. Another marine biologist, John Calambokidis, discovered – in addition to many plastic bags – sweatpants, surgical gloves and a golf ball inside a dead gray whale he was studying.
In fact, all types of sea life are dying at higher rates, not coincidentally due to the fact that there is more garbage present in the ocean. The most recent scientific research estimates that there are more than five trillion pieces of garbage in the world’s oceans, coming in at more than 250,000 tons. Scientists warn that the plastic particles that sea life ingests don’t just end up inside fish’s bellies, it also flows up the food chain to humans when they, in turn, eat the fish.