You and I have blood on our hands! Whale found dead off Philippines coast had 40kg of plastic in its stomach
Dear fellow humans. Let this sink in. The huge cache of dumped plastic waste that the whale swallowed over a period of time to a slow, painful death came from us. We manufactured it, we dumped it in the ocean.
Philippines: Mankind has ruined planet Earth like no other species ever had. A living or rather 'dead' proof of that is this dead body of the Cuvier's beaked whale that washed up at the east of Davao City off the coast of the Philippines on March 16 and taken into custody for investigation and necropsy by an NGO named D' Bone Collector Museum Inc. The NGO workers had unsuspectingly only posted the sad news that a dead whale had been found and that they will investigate it etc.
"6 am today we got a notification from BFAR XI that a whale was stuck in the shores of Sitio Asinan, Barangay Cadunan, Mabini Compostela Valley. 11am we were informed it just died and arrived in the area as fast as we can. Now we are traveling back to Davao with a Cuvier's Beaked Whale. Doing this is not just for our gain but mainly to give education and for people to realize how magnificent these animals are. We will give you more update after the necropsy," D' Bone Collector Museum Inc. wrote on their Facebook page.
What came as a shock was the huge amount of a variety of plastics they found inside its stomach. The volunteers at the D'Bone Collector Museum found after autopsy of the animal that its stomach was filled with "the most plastic we have ever seen in a whale" that included 16 rice sacks in its stomach, as well as "multiple shopping bags.
"The final cause of death is in for the death of the juvenile male curvier beaked whale we recovered March 16 2019. 40 kilos of plastic bags. Including 16 rice sacks. 4 banana plantation style bags and multiple shopping bags. A full list of the plastic items will follow in the next few days. This whale had the most plastic we have ever seen in a whale. It's disgusting. Action must be taken by the government against those who continue to treat the waterways and ocean as dumpsters," the D'Bone Collector Museum post on 17 March 2019 said.
A similar shocker had been reported from Indonesia in November last year. A dead sperm whale that washed ashore in a national park had ingested nearly 6kg of plastic waste according to the park officials. Here's what they found inside the animal's stomach: 115 drinking cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, and two flip-flops, among many other items.
Man is the culprit, everyone on Earth suffers:
Since the 1960s to now, plastic has become an integral part of our daily life. From packaging to everyday use items, furniture, and medical disposables, grocery bags etc... plastic is now an unavoidable element of our lives in a variety of forms and sadly, it isn’t biodegradable.
It is estimated that people around the world throw away almost four million tons of trash every day, of which 12.8% is plastic. All this leads to pollution of land, air and water as plastic thrown into landfills contaminates the soil and groundwater with harmful chemicals and microorganisms, the effects of marine pollution caused by plastic are immeasurable, says marineinsights.com.
Garbage (read especially plastic) in the ocean jeopardises the natural ambience of marine life. It disrupts the entire bio-geo cycle causing unwanted problems to the whole marine eco-system.
Reports say that around one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed every due to plastic ingestion.
We have only one Earth and it needs to be rescued:
If you want to join the global campaign to end plastic pollution, here's what you can do, suggests earthday.org.
Reduce: Cut down your own plastic waste. How about taking along your own reusable coffee cup when going out to get beverages? Use sturdy and reusable water bottles for water instead of single-use bottles or cups. Refuse beverage tops, you are not going to spill, are you?
Reuse: Bring your own jute/cloth/reusable shopping bags to markets. Avoid using single-use plastic bags.
Refuse: Say “No straw, please” when requesting beverages at restaurants or cafes.
Restyle: Choose clothing and other personal items made from earth-friendly materials instead of microfibers and other synthetic fibers.
Remove: Pick up trash in your neighborhood and when visiting parks and beaches.
Recycle: Recycle the plastics you use and no longer need.
Return: Give back single-use bags to grocery stores for them to recycle.
Rally: Educate others gently and by your own example. Reach out to your elected leaders, urging them to ban plastic bags and other single-use plastic items. Choose only candidates committed to protecting and improving our environment.
A Mumbai lawyer Afroz Shah has been spearheading a beach cleanup programme since 2015 and has removed millions of tonnes of waste plastic that washed up on the Versova beach of Mumbai, with the help of hundreds of volunteers. The beach is so clean and free of plastics now that turtles have hatched on the beaches that were once drowning under tons of plastic waste.