Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumSperm Whales Found Full of Car Parts and Plastics
The whales first surfaced in January and February near the coastal town of Tönning in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. After officials ordered a necropsy of the bodies, post-mortem results were announced in a presentation at the Multimar Wattforum Centre on March 23.
Four of the 13 whales had large amounts of plastic waste in their stomachs, and some of the garbage included a 13-meter-long fishing net, a 70-centimeter-long plastic car engine cover and the remains of a plastic bucket, according to a press release from the Schleswig-Holstein Wadden Sea National Park.
These findings show us the effects of our plastic society: Animals inadvertently take in plastic and other plastic waste and suffer, and at worst, starve with full stomachs, environment minister Robert Habeck said in a statement (via Google Translate).
This reminds us that we step up the fight against waste in the sea, he said.
The whales were said to be all young bulls between the ages of 10 to 15 and weighed between 12 to 18 tons. Before surfacing in the shallow waters of the Wadden Sea in the North Sea, scientists suspected that the last time the whales had anything to eat besides plastic trash was in the Norwegian Sea.
https://ecowatch.com/2016/03/28/ocean-plastic-dead-sperm-whales/
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/03/160331-car-parts-plastics-dead-whales-germany-animals/
2naSalit
(86,868 posts)I no longer harbor much respect for my species when I think about the damage done to all other species by my species.
xynthee
(477 posts)I hate plastic so much.
paparush
(7,964 posts)Such beautiful, gentle creatures dying slow painful deaths as a result of our waste.
narnian60
(3,510 posts)Dont call me Shirley
(10,998 posts)Can we stop these fucked up wars which is #1 cause of pollution and resource use so someone can figure out a safe effective way to harvest this plastic from the ocean before it becomes uninhabitable. WTF is wrong with the 1% that they believe this is ok?!
Metro135
(359 posts)d_legendary1
(2,586 posts)For them to eat plastics means that their food supply is becoming scarce. This is heart breaking.
abelenkpe
(9,933 posts)Cryptoad
(8,254 posts)ffr
(22,674 posts)SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)red dog 1
(27,884 posts)hatrack
(59,594 posts)We will kill everything, from diatoms to whales and from plankton to peregrines, because "convenience".
We will kill everything from woodpeckers to walruses, because "low, LOW PRICES!!"
We will kill everything because we're too busy posting what we had for lunch online, or staring at our cell phones to learn more about what we need next to pay attention, because "aspirational" and "early adopter".
We will kill everything because we WILL NOT PAY ten cents more than the lowest price we can find at Amazon for Shiny Thing (TM), because "smart shopper".
We will kill everything, because "math is hard", "I never heard of that country", "How do you pronounce that?" and "Where?"
We will kill everything, because we're too busy obsessing about how awesome and special we are to be bothered to learn, because "God's chosen people", "crown of creation", "reaching for the stars".
And then, when everything - the inbound and the outbound, the living and the dead - have all been reduced to tailings, it will be our turn to kill ourselves.
Nihil
(13,508 posts)Poignant, depressing and oh so true.
Fishing nets floating around in our seas, because eating fresh northern fish is recommended a least once a week, so twice or three times is better.
Plastic buckets and car parts too when 100 years ago there were none in the seas, because the steel bucket costs more and steel parts are heavy and rust.
And we must think WE are doing something right with our stewardship of the planet, because we're doing such a fine job of it now, we need to add more of us to the planet to help the situation.
red dog 1
(27,884 posts)From the OP:
"The team believes that this particular group mistakenly swam into the North Sea,
a shallower zone in between the U.K. and Norway.
There the whales could not support their own body weights, and their internal organs collapsed."