Sadly another whale has washed up dead on Seilbost beach in Scotland with large amounts of plastic, fishing nets, and rope in its stomach. This time around it was a sperm whale and the weight of the mass of pollution in its stomach was 100kg or 220 pounds.
Whale experts commented and said it was not immediately clear if the debris had contributed to the whale’s death.
The Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme (SMASS) is a group funded by the Scottish and U.K. governments that track marine and animal strandings along the coastlines. They said: “All this material was in a huge ball in the stomach, and some of it looked like it had been there for some time.”
Locals that found the whale talked about how sad it was to find.
Dan Parry from Luskentyre said:
It was desperately sad, especially when you saw the fishing nets and debris that came out of its stomach. We walk on these beaches nearly every day and I always take a bag to pick up litter, most of which is fishing-related. This stuff could have easily been netting or the like lost in a storm, we just don’t know, but it does show the scale of the problem we have with marine pollution.
SMASS posted on its Facebook page:
The animal wasn’t in particularly poor condition, and whilst it is certainly plausible that this amount of debris was a factor in its live stranding, we actually couldn’t find evidence that this had impacted or obstructed the intestines. This amount of plastic in the stomach is nonetheless horrific, must have compromised digestion, and serves to demonstrate yet again the hazards that marine litter and lost or discarded fishing gear can cause to marine life.
Fishing nets and plastic are not a proper diet for a whale or any other species. It’s estimated that 10 million tonnes of plastic end up in the ocean every year.
Whales in particular play a crucial role in the ability to absorb CO2 on this planet. I hope people will take this as a wakeup call. This is about every single human paying attention on an individual level. The plastic that is used every day from shopping bags to unnecessary plastic straws. It all affects our environment. Animals and nature are connected to humans and they are trying to send us warning signs. We are on borrowed time and we need to make changes, yesterday.
