Sea turtle saved from plastic

During my temporary stay on the Morgan in the Canary Islands, I have been helping SECAC’s (and www.museodecetaceos.org) Silvana Neves with her research into dolphin sounds. The acoustics project lasted a week and today was the last day of this very intensive work. But as we were concentrating on the sounds of the dolphins, we were interrupted by an image so shocking that we immediately stopped our research to help an animal in need. A sea turtle was choking, entangled in a large plastic bag.

We can’t avoid it anymore

Plastic, plastic, plastic. It is everywhere and there is no way back. But this ‘useful’ product is an enormous threat to the life in the ocean, and should be seen as the silent murderer. Not only for nature, but also for ourselves, plastic is a threat. Today we were able to save an animal from a terrible death. After spotting the turtle at sea with an enormous plastic bag around its neck, we stopped to help it. It was completely entangled in the bag, and if we had not freed it, it would certainly have died.

Sea turtles eat all sorts of things, and one of their favourite foods are jellyfish. But unfortunately, a plastic bag under water looks exactly like one of these delicacies. The turtle swims up to the ‘jellyfish’ and before it knows what is happening it has fallen victim to the killer bag. Turtles often get entangled in the handles or swim into the bags, unable to find their way out again.

Suffocated, entangled, starved and poisoned

Turtles are air breathing animals, and they drown if they can’t reach the surface to breathe. When they become entangled in heavy plastic objects and are unable to surface, they suffocate to death. If the turtles eat the plastic, the bags block their digestive systems, causing the animals to die from starvation. This is a long slow process, and many will die from poisoning, that is, they die from the chemicals that the bag contains. They, in turn, are eaten by fish and other predators. The fish that we eat, as the last link in the food chain, are poisoned by miniscule particles of plastic.

With all the plastic at sea, the image of this entangled sea turtle is one that we will see more often. The only thing we can do is save the few that we come across, and release them again.

Rescue at sea

We managed to disentangle this turtle from its trap and, as with all the turtles that are found at sea, it was measured, examined, cleaned, the parasites removed, and released. This one was lucky that it landed in the caring hands of one of the SECAC researchers, was rescued and released.

In the meantime, the dolphins that we were listening to when we happened across the turtle had left. The turtle was also the last animal that we saw at sea during this research project, and we were happy that we had been able to rescue it. A wonderful end to a very intensive piece of research.

The ocean is adrift with plastic, and we spend a lot of time removing as much as we can. After one day at sea we can have a couple of large bags full of plastic. People often ask us what they can do about this. Actually it is very simple. Not so long ago people would take their own bags and baskets when they went shopping. Now we see it as ‘service’ if a supermarket or shop gives us a plastic bag to put our purchases in. This has led to a flood of plastic bags. In delivering ‘fast service’ I too sometimes leave a supermarket with a number of bags, each of which contains only one item. Bring along a shopping bag and say ‘no’ to plastic bags. In the end the shopping will be cheaper too, because ultimately, we are paying for that ‘service’ ourselves.