Sea Turtles And Their Guilty Pleasure
A person smokes knowing it will kill them one day. Who’s to say a sea turtle doesn’t eat plastic, knowing it will kill them one day too?
I have always claimed myself a sea turtle lover, so much that I wish to have my ashes thrown into the sea to be reborn as a sea turtle. For so long, I believed it right (and I still do) to love the ocean by not littering it with rubbish because the ocean is what gives us life. I made it as though I had never existed as a person so that my plastic waste contribution would be zero- A blind mentality without questioning the matter.
Until one midnight, I stopped fighting what I thought was virtuous.
I was trying to convince my boyfriend why he should ditch the lazy attitude and just separate plastics from general trash. Obviously, looking at our swordplay, we both knew my case was going to win because what can beat saving the sea turtles, saving the planet?
‘Well, what if they like eating it!’
By instinct, I wanted to oppose and shut down this thought. But for some reason, I couldn’t. I wanted to shut this down entirely because if I supported this fact, I would be saying, sure, let them eat what they want, and let them die. They want it anyway. It is true. They wouldn’t be eating it if they didn’t like it.
A sea turtle wouldn’t be eating plastic bags if they weren’t yummy. Why do we stop them? Virtuosity. Because we can’t bear to see them die at our hands.
But get past that do-good mentality for one second. Could we deny a sea turtle’s potential intelligence? Could it be that we have been dumbfounded by these animals to think they were intellectually helpless when they just have a child’s incontrollable surrender to things they should not do or eat? Maybe this whole time, they were not dumb but aware and addicted.
While I was impressed by the abstract possibility, I also had a million questions to fill the huge gap in my knowledge on the matter I claimed to love.
Here are some possible questions you may be asking yourself, attempted to be answered.
1. Do sea turtles actually mistake plastic bags for jellyfish?
I don’t believe it’s a strong no.
If you don’t know anything biological about sea turtles, you should at least know this one thing- their primary sense is sight.
If a sea turtle did not have perfect sight, it is understandable that their murky vision would make a mistake. But no, sea turtles have perfect eyesight underwater. Light can be refracted with their flat corneas, allowing them to see clearly in the water, unlike our curved human ones.
You cannot really blame a sea turtle for mistaking plastic bags for jellyfish based on first impressions. Fair enough, because how would you expect a sea turtle to know what manufactured objects are? Factories and machines are alien to them.
But still, I cannot rule out the possibility that they recognize a plastic bag by sight and know that plastic bags are not jellyfish but still eat them anyway.
Why?
Some say sea turtles are attracted to the odor plastic bags give out. This odor is definitely not jellyfish odor. Jellyfish and chemicals cannot taste the same… While research is unclear on what chemicals from a plastic bag the sea turtle is attracted to, it is possible the sea turtle did not mistake it for food.
2. How is it possible sea turtles realize they are eating a plastic bag and not a jellyfish and still do it anyway?
Let’s say, one day, two sea turtles happened to swim in the same waters. And let’s say, at the exact moment, both sea turtles see a plastically fragrant ‘jellyfish’ ahead of them and establish a competition. The slower turtle misses out on its chance and can only watch in desire as the other survival champion enjoys its ‘food.’
Seemingly the loser lost all. But, what if the loser happened to admire the champion and decided to trail behind it, only to witness its crippling aftermath?
Next, by chance, nature decided to gift the loser with a twitch, marking the birth of sea turtle cognition. What if that one sea turtle came into consciousness and cognitively realized plastic was crippling another mate but decided to turn a blind eye and give in to indignity?
Surely as symbolically wise as sea turtles are, they would realize how not to die.
How not to die was not on this turtle’s top agenda. It became addicted so much that the sweet addiction to plastic fragrance succeeds the knowing fatality.
3. Are sea turtles realistically smart enough for this?
Sea turtles will remember things. Some argue they have emotion, while others argue not. For now, we only know that they experience the most basic survival emotions, such as fear.
For a sea turtle to recognize addiction (a.k.a. pursuing something pleasurable for them while knowing it is harmful to them), they would have to have the level of consciousness and cognition a human would. For now, it is unknown because no one knows how to test it.
Think about it. I am no scientist, but what would it mean if sea turtles could tell a manufactured item and a natural being apart? If sea turtles formed even the slightest hint of intelligent mutation, it could tell us more about how our world is evolving. But for now, we need to keep saving the sea turtles because nothing deserves to die on our bloody hands.
