"Large volumes of fishing traps, fishing nets, plastic bags and other marine debris" were found in the stomach of a sperm whale that beached in Hawaii.
As reported in The Independent:
The body of the 56ft (17-meter) long, 120,000-pound (54,431-kilogram) animal was first noticed on a reef off Kauai on Friday. High tide brought it ashore on Saturday. Kristi West, the director of the University of Hawaii's Health and Stranding Lab, said there were enough foreign objects in the opening of the whale's intestinal tract to block food.
Scientists say that more than 35 million tons (31.9 million metric tons) of plastic pollution is produced around Earth each year, and about a quarter of that ends up around the water.
To be clear, this is not about human consumption and pollution but the industries, businesses, and politicians that create policies and laws that normalize environmental devastation in the name of profit and progress. We need more people's nurdle patrols and less production of plastic, which means a change in how humans interact with the planet, specifically the items consumed and produced.
I write this post out of sadanger. I am angry and sad that this is a true happening on this earth. Angry that the cultural logics of capitalist consumption, competition, and accumulation through dispossession, which have become the dominant way of interacting with each other and the planet, have led to all species on earth, including humans, to have increasingly higher levels of plastics in our bodies, ecosystems, and global waterways.
