Over the past two weeks, two whales have washed up on shores—one in the Philippines, and one in Italy—with stomachs stuffed with disposable plastic trash. On March 16, a young Cuvier's beaked whale died and was found in Mabini after having consumed about 88 pounds of plastics. Last week, a pregnant sperm whale washed up dead in Sardinia with a little less than 50 pounds of plastic in her stomach. The beaked whale was found in a state of advanced dehydration and starvation, while the sperm whale’s death has not been fully diagnosed.
Whales hydrate themselves by absorbing water through their food. Marine biologist Darrell Blatchley, who worked on the Philippines beaked whale, told CNN, "I was not prepared for the amount of plastic. Roughly 40 kilos of rice sacks, grocery bags, banana plantation bags and general plastic bags. Sixteen rice sacks in total." Blatchley explained that the plastics in the beaked whale had blocked the mammal’s ability to absorb the nutrition and hydration it required from any real food it ate.
Luca Bittau, president of SEAME Sardinia, an Italian organization dedicated to the protection of cetaceans and other marine life, told CNN that the pregnant whale in Sardinia had “certainly aborted before (she) beached." He said that some of the contents found inside of the whale included bags of washing machine liquid and garbage bags.
Our waterways are filled with our plastic waste. Recent research shows that not only do plastics poison and pollute ocean ecosystems, but their slow degradation adds to our warming climate. States such as California have moved to get rid of some of the more egregious disposable uses of plastics, only to be met with intense opposition from the plastic companies most affected.