It's fair to say that plastic pollution is one of the gravest environmental threats facing us today. Although we often hear about the critical state of our oceans, and the effect that fossil-fuel-derived materials have on the creatures of the seas, the fact is that land-dwelling flora and fauna are just as much at risk, as the following post sadly proves.
Vets working at the Nara Deer Welfare Association have reported that one of their does has died as a result of ingesting over four kilograms of plastic waste.
The sick deer was found by the Todaiji temple in Nara Park in Japan on March 23. Despite their best efforts to feed the 17-year-old female deer, she refused food and died the next day. She apparently weighed a mere 30 kilograms.
Check out this super-cute video all about the Nara deer park below:
The vets performed an autopsy on the corpse of the deer, opening up her stomach and intestines. They discovered that her guts had been clogged by hardened plastic (thought to be made from polyethene bags) which made it impossible for her to regurgitate and digest.
In the last year, a further six deer have been found with plastic in their stomachs.
Visitors to the park often feed the deer food from out of plastic bags. The animals are often unable to distinguish between container and contents, and thus end up swallowing the polyethene whole. In a desperate bid to prevent any more deer from swallowing plastic, the Welfare Association has created an environmentally-friendly bag made from natural materials, which tourists are encouraged to use in lieu of anything harmful.
A deer from Thailand has been found dead this week, after the animal allegedly ingested more than 15lbs worth of plastic.
According to a report by BBC News, the animal's corpse was discovered by researchers working at Khun Sathan National Park, in the Nan province in northern Thailand. According to Kriangsak Thanompun, a spokesperson working for the park, the deer had apparently been eating plastic for a "long time" before expiring.
An autopsy was performed on the ten-year-old dead stag, which determined that the creature had died two days previously (on either November 24 or 25) as a direct result of the garbage and human detritus it has swallowed.
When the animal's stomach was cut open, more than seven kilograms of trash was found inside its digestive tract, including men's underwear, plastic bags, instant coffee sachets, instant noodle packaging, towels, and a length of plastic cord.
The photographs of the autopsy were later uploaded to the official Facebook page of the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation, where the shocking images of the contents of the deer's stomach quickly went viral. The caption for the pictures noted that toxins in food and other infections caused by the trash would also have contributed to the animal's death.
Take a look at this footage of these beautiful animals from 'Deer Park' in Japan:
According to Mr. Kriangsak, park officials intend to launch a "three-phase plan" which will employ local volunteers to collect plastics and other trash in the national park area, to protect the wildlife that might be under threat as a result of the pollution.
If you've ever seen that horrible final episode of Blue Planet II, where albatross parents feed their baby birds plastic and a beautiful turtle gets caught up in a rogue bag, then you'll already know that humans are inadvertently doing some pretty terrible things to the world's oceans right now. Last year, we managed to dump an estimated 8 million tonnes of plastic into our waters - and while this may seem like a huge amount in itself, a recent report has predicted that the amount of litter in the sea could triple within a decade unless something drastic is done.
Now, the horrific real life side-effects of this plastic pollution have been brought to life once more in a series of heartbreaking images that have emerged from Thailand, showing a pilot whale who died after mistakenly ingesting up to 80 plastic bags.
The whale was first discovered ill in a canal near the country's border with Malaysia, according to Thailand's Department of Marine and Coastal Resources. Good samaritans used buoys to keep the animal afloat and an umbrella to shield it from the sun; after receiving treatment from veterinarians, the whale was stabilised and managed to bring up five plastic bags.
However, the whale's condition later deteriorated and it passed away. It was during the autopsy that scientists discovered the mass of plastic bags, weighing up to 8kg (17lbs), which the Department's head believes it had mistaken for food. While the whales usually feed on squid, they do eat octopus and smaller fish when necessary. In images posted on the Department of Marine and Coastal Resources' website, it is clear that the bags cover most of the room's floor.
Speaking after the event, Jatuporn Buruspat, head of the department, told Reuters that they would be using the case to raise awareness of the environmental impact of plastic pollution ahead of World Oceans Day on June 8: "We will use the whale case and invite all sectors to show their intentions on how to reduce the use of plastic in Thailand". In 2017, a report by Ocean Conservancy listed Thailand as one of five countries - alongside China, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam - who dump more plastic into the ocean than all other nations combined.
But the depressing truth is that there is still so much more to be done, because as horrible as this story may be, there are still thousands more animals killed by plastic waste every day whose stories you'll never even read about.
"Reduce, reuse, recycle," come the cries of the eco-warriors. However, while taking a firm stance on environmental issues is still stigmatised, the effects of humankind's lax attitude towards the planet is manifesting itself in ever more concerning ways.
A sperm whale, one of the largest animals on the planet, is likely to have been defeated by the 1,000 pieces of plastic trash in its stomach. Washed ashore in an Indonesian national park, the carcass was assessed by researchers who discovered almost six kilos of plastic in its stomach.
Items discovered included 115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops. The 9.5m (31ft) creature was found near Kapota Island in the Wakatobi National Park late on Monday. The whale had to be buried without a necropsy due to its decayed condition but it's thought that the plastics in its stomach could be responsible for its death.
Zach Abraham, Director of Global Campaigns at WWF International, told VT: "This devastating discovery is a painful reminder of the impact that plastic pollution is having in our oceans and the damage it is causing to marine life. Governments and businesses must do more to prevent plastic from entering our rivers and oceans."
Last year, in addition to the news that we now cannot reverse climate change simply by planting trees, it was also reported that marine ecosystems are facing "irreparable damage". Stating that we are not in a position to fully heal our oceans might seem like a pessimistic approach. However, considering 10 million tonnes of plastic waste ends up in the world's oceans every year, it's not hard to see how the UN came to this conclusion.
In fact, in March, it was reported that a study by Foresight Future of the Sea Report had found that ocean plastic could triple in the next decade. Three months later, a pilot whale died off the southern coast of Thailand having swallowed 80 plastic bags."If nature had a distress signal to warn us that it can't take any more of our plastic rubbish," Greenpeace stated in a press release, "it would look like this - a dead whale with 1,000 pieces of plastic in its stomach. Our throwaway culture has turned whales' guts into dustbins for our plastic waste. And the global plastic contamination doesn't end there - this material is already in the food we eat, the water we drink, and inevitably in our bodies too. It's clear that we can't go on like this."
According to a German study, the majority of the plastics in the ocean come from just 10 major rivers - the Yangtze, the Indus, Yellow River, Hai River, the Nile, the Ganges, Pearl River, Amur River, the Niger, and the Mekong (in that order).There exists a clear cultural and corporate divide between east and west, with five Asian countries - China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Thailand - responsible for more than half of the plastic waste that ends up in our oceans. This is according to a report published in 2015 by Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment.
In a tweet by WWF-Indonesia, they explain just what the carcass contained: "Hard plastic (19 pieces, 140g), plastic bottles (4 pieces, 150g), plastic bags (25 pieces, 260g), flip-flops (2 pieces, 270g), pieces of string (3.26kg) & plastic cups (115 pieces, 750g)."
“This discovery is deeply upsetting," Dwi Suprapti, WWF-Indonesia Marine Species Specialist, told VT. "It is a wake-up call for Indonesians about how plastic pollution is causing irreparable damage to our oceans and marine life. We urge businesses and governments to work together to address this issue urgently to prevent further plastic leakage into our oceans."
However, there are wider implications for those who eat meat and fish. While cups and flip-flops are - of course - a huge problem, there are also 51 trillion microplastic particles in the ocean. In many cases, plastic pellets are lost before they have a chance to be manufactured into something. Often ending up in drains, streams or bags of trash destined for landfill, they regularly make their way into the ocean.
Other microplastics can be found in toothpastes, facewash and cleaning items. That said, the items in the ocean which are visibly affecting wildlife - such as carrier bags - are also eventually broken down into microplastics.
Due to the cyclical nature of the food chain, these plastics then end right back where they started - with the humans. Because of the sheer quantity of meat and fish we eat, we ingest far more microplastics than any restaurant or supermarket would have you believe.
However, as well as meat and fish products, microplastics have also been found in honey, beer and sea salt. In fact, due to the erosion of the bottle itself, bottled water may contain up to 241 microplastic particles per litre.
"If we want to stop this slow-motion environmental disaster unfolding before our eyes," Greenpeace continue, "we need to immediately start cutting the amount of throwaway plastic we produce. The change needs to take place at the source: in the supermarket aisles where so much plastic packaging is sold and in the production lines of consumer giants like Coke, Nestle and others, where our plastic problem originates."
Eating up to one tonne of food per day, sperm whales are especially at risk of ingesting plastics and are considered a vulnerable species by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). However, living for up to 70 years and having the largest brain of any animal to have ever existed, sperm whales are in a unique position to observe the damage that the two-legged land creatures are doing to their home.
In one minute, you can take part in this Greenpeace campaign and urge major corporations to rethink their relationship with plastic.
Last week, the body of a sperm whale washed up on the shores of Sardinia, Italy.
The mammal, measuring eight metres (26.2 feet) long, was transferred by local fire brigades to a research facility, where veterinarians and researchers from Sassari and the University of Padua discovered that she was pregnant and, perhaps even more tragically, had died with 22 kg (49 lbs) of litter in her stomach.
"It was dramatic to find the fetus ... we felt bad already at that point," recalled Mattia Leone, a marine biologist who was present for the post-mortem exam. "But then when we opened the stomach and saw all the plastic, we realised, yet again, we were bearing witness to this very worrisome, sad situation."
It is not clear yet whether or not the plastic in her stomach was instrumental in the whale's death, but it almost certainly contributed to the malnourishment and demise of her calf.
Luca Bittau, the president of the SEAME (Scientific Education and Activities in the Marine Environment) group, told CNN that the poor creature's stomach contained "garbage bags ... fishing nets, lines, tubes, the bag of a washing machine liquid still identifiable, with brand and barcode ... and other objects no longer identifiable".
"She was pregnant and had almost certainly aborted before (she) beached," he said. "The foetus was in an advanced state of composition."
"This spermwhale was found dead in porto cervo in Sardinia: in the belly she had a fetus and 22 kg of plastic... are there still people who say these are not important problems?" Sergio Costa, Italy's environment minister, wrote on Facebook. "For me yes, and they are priority."
"Marine Litter (the waste at sea) affects all marine life, not only Italy, of course, but every country in the world has the duty to apply policies to fight it. We have used in a carefree way the 'comfort' of disposables in recent years, and today we are paying the consequences - indeed, especially the animals."
According to a WWF study released last year, more than 95 percent of the waste in the Mediterranean Sea and on its beaches is made of plastic. Waste levels in tourist areas - such as Sardinia - are especially bad, as litter left by visitors (combined with poor local environmental management) is to blame.
The area where the whale was discovered is quite a popular tourist spot, as there is a rich marine life presence around 20 miles or so off the Sardinian coast. Known as the Caprera Canyon, the area is home to many species of whales and three different species of dolphin.
Unfortunately, if incidents like this recent one continue, we may cease to see areas like this. In fact, if we do not act soon, we may eventually wipe out all ocean life entirely.
Leone disclosed that SEAME wants to preserve this whale's skeleton in order to educate others on the impact that people are having on the ocean, and to raise awareness on the impact that plastic and other waste is having on wildlife in our seas and oceans.
When sitting down for a nice bit of fish, you'd like to think that you know what you're getting, right? I mean, what else is there to it? It's just a fish. But sadly, due to how wasteful we are as a species, and down to our determination to destroy the planet as quickly as we feasibly can, your fish might actually have a secret ingredient to it: plastic.
I know that it might sound mental, and obviously you're not pulling a coke bottle out of your trout, but microplastics are causing major harm to our oceans and marine wildlife. According to the US' National Ocean Service, ocean microplastics are "small plastic pieces less than five millimetres long which can be harmful to our ocean and aquatic life."
These little bits of destruction come in a variety of different forms but are mostly found in cosmetics, cleaning products and even toothpaste (not too sure why we're cleaning our teeth with plastic...)
While the full extent of the impact microplastics are having on marine life is unknown, it seems highly likely that they are doing a lot more bad than good to our sealife. Researched conducted by Ireland's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has revealed that at least 24 species of fish, molluscs, birds, crustaceans and mammals can be badly affected when they consume microplastic particles.
Like everything in life, there is obviously a cycle to all of this, and the honest truth is that these microplastics more than likely end up on our plate and in our mouths. If a fish is swallowing microplastics and then you are eating that fish, then you're also chowing down on it as well.
The effects that plastic can have on marine life is a hotly discussed subject, with Louisa Casson, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, commenting on the situation:
"Once plastic is in the ocean it can cause all kinds of harm to marine life. Studies have shown that 90% of seabirds and one in three turtles have eaten plastic. The big bits, like bottles, bags and packaging, can choke and entangle marine life. Then over time these big pieces break down into microplastics - tiny pieces which can be eaten by creatures big and small, clogging their guts, spreading toxic chemicals, and entering every level of the food chain."Even if you're someone who's not too fussed about what happens to marine life, this stuff is starting to find its way onto our plates in seafood. If you ate a plate of oysters, you're likely to have consumed around 50 pieces of microplastics. Scientists are urgently trying to figure out what kind of impact that could be having on human health."
Orb, a media company who focus on the environment, found that microplastics are contaminating tap water in many countries, however they still aren't sure how they got there. The US had a shocking 94 percent contamination rate, while the UK was a little lower with 72 per cent.
Essentially, too many of us are treating our toilets like bins, leading to their being huge amount of pollution in the sea and oceans. It's estimated that around 80 per cent of plastic in the sea originates from land-based sources. We are slowly destroying our planet and we need to curb our attitude towards waste quickly, before it's too late.
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