So today, while in one of my lectures all about the damaging effects of plastics on marine ecosystems, I was taken aback by how just a couple of days ago a sperm whale washed-up dead in Taiwan was found to have a huge mass of plastic rubbish inside its stomach, including fishing nets and plastic bags... And marine biologists say it's likely that this played a large role in the whale's death. The link to the full article can be found here:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/huge-mass-of-rubbish-including-plastic-bags-and-fishing-nets-found-in-dead-whales-stomach-in-taiwan-a6711986.html
Clearly, the immense volume of plastic that ends up in the oceans each year is very worrying and something that is changing the face of our marine ecosystems.
Look out for future posts as I will definitely be writing more on this important issue.
Ahh I didn't hear about the whale :( How sad. I saw an article about a leather back sea turtle which met the same fate and was inspired to blog about it as well. Sea creatures seem to be washing up more and more often these days, we really need to come up with some solutions that work. In my research at least, it seems that there isn't much success at the moment - have you found anything?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment Ben. Yes I agree, there seem to be more and more cases like the ones we've both read about..worrying what we are doing to our marine ecosystems. Like you I haven't seen much on possible solutions to this though I did come across this website http://www.kimointernational.org/MarineLitter.aspx which has useful information on marine waste in Europe's water and a possible solution in a scheme called 'Fishing for Litter'.
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