A dead whale in the Philippines had 88 pounds of plastic trash in its body, and a whale expert said in some areas of the whale’s stomach the plastic had been there so long it was “almost like a solid brick.”
The body of the whale, 15 feet long and weighing 1,000 pounds, washed ashore near the town of Mabini. It had more than 40 pounds of plastic bags in its stomach (see the picture, above), 16 rice sacks, four banana plantation-style bags, and a variety of other plastic waste.
Darrell Blatchley, owner of D’Bone Collector Museum in Davao City, said it was the worst collection of plastic he’d ever seen. “The plastic in some areas was so compact it was almost becoming calcified, almost like a solid brick. It had been there for so long that it had started to compact.”
Ingesting plastic gives whales a false sense of fullness. But then they have no way of digesting or expelling it. They also get the water they need, not from the ocean, but from the food they eat. In this case, Blatchley said that because of the mass of plastic in its stomach, the whale couldn’t get the nutrients it needed to survive, and it ultimately died of dehydration and starvation. It appeared to have vomited blood before it died.
A 2015 study estimated that from five million to 13 million metric tons of plastic flow into the world’s ocean every year. The problem is particularly severe in the Philippines, which is the world’s third largest contributor, after China and Indonesia. Single-use plastics are particularly widespread there, recycling is difficult, and a patchwork of local laws are ineffective in dealing with the issue. Read more:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/18/world/asia/whale-plastics-philippines.html
