A dead whale was discovered with more than 85 pounds of plastic bags in its stomach, according to officials.
He said it was a male Culver’s Beaked Whale, which was vomiting blood when it died in Mabini, Philippines.
Whales, Blatchley said, don’t drink water from the ocean and get fresh water from the food they eat. The plastic caused the whale to die of dehydration and starvation.
“This whale had the most plastic we have ever seen in a whale. It’s disgusting,” he said.
He called on the Philippine government and Filipinos to not use single-use plastic items.
“The Philippine people are a proud people, sadly it’s not in being clean or taking care of the environment. In the last 10 years we have recovered 61 whales and dolphins, of which 57 have died due to fishing nets, dynamite fishing, and plastic garbage. Four were pregnant. This cannot continue. The Philippines needs to change from the children up or nothing will be left,” Blatchley told CNN.
The Ocean Conservancy said that single-use plastic items are common in Southeast Asia and China.
The organization said in 2017 that China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam have been dumping more plastic into the world’s oceans that the rest of the world combined.
In June of 2018, a pilot whale was found dead in Thailand after swallowing 80 plastic bags.
Dead Humpback Whale Ends Up in Forest?
Several weeks ago, a dead humpback whale was discovered in a mangrove forest in Brazil with no obvious signs as to how it got there.Officials think it died several days before it was discovered.
“Along with this astonishing feat, we are baffled as to what a humpback whale is doing on the north coast of Brazil during February because this is a very unusual occurrence.”
Oceanographer Maura Sousa said the whale was found near the mouth of the Amazon River.
