Going Beyond “Save the Turtles”: The Ramifications Plastic Pollution has on other Marine Mammals
Don’t roll your eyes at me just yet. This is real and this is happening.
Whenever I tell someone I am an environmental science major, I often get the response of “better not see you using a straw” or “save the turtles”!
I try and refrain from getting defensive, but nine times out of ten I tend to lean that way. It just is not a good look for someone who is actually trying to make a change in our planet. The “save the turtles” campaign had good intentions, and actually did result in plastic straw bans globally. However, the attitude and performative nature of the idea kind of grinds my gears.
Turtles are not the only marine life impacted by plastic pollution, and straws are not the only plastic in our oceans.
A few summers ago, I took a trip to Turks and Caicos with my family. One late morning, I embarked on a solo dive with the clearest of conditions. The sun was cutting through the surface of the ocean just right for me to observe the bustling environment below the waves. The sound of the crackling shrimp and the glug-glug-glug of the bubbles leaving my snorkel accompanied me. The water was brisk and especially salty this day, I took mental note.
I was not too far into my dive when I encountered a spotted eagle ray and decided to glide along-side it for a while. I even watched it feed. The cloud of crushed shells billowed from its mouth as I looked down on it in awe.
I continued on, observing some fascinating creatures, when I experienced plastic pollution first-hand.
The time had come for my dive to be ruined.
Not even five minutes after seeing my little eagle ray friend, I encountered this piece of plastic floating around in the open sea.
At this time, I was only 16 and had not received any education in terms of what the plastic pollution situation was in our world. I knew it was inherently out of place and did not belong there, but had no idea the weight of seeing that plastic in such close proximity to marine life.
I myself thought this plastic from far away resembled a jellyfish, just as the turtles did. I understood their confusion in this moment, that’s for sure.
Jellyfish and Plastic Pollution
Let’s talk about the history of plastic pollution and jellyfish.
The first documentation of plastic found in jellyfish was in 2016.
Cigarette wrappers (among other things) were found under the hoods of these jellyfish.
After scientists performed some research on these jellies in more depth, they found that quite a few of the jellyfish had plastic in their digestive systems.
This has been studied for quite some time, and scientists believe it is because these animals mistake the plastic for prey.
Turtles mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, and fish eat plastic the size of rice that resembles their normal food (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-jellyfish-plastic-cigarette-wrapper).
I, too, mistook plastic debris for a jellyfish.
In addition to plastic looking like marine animals’ food, it also can smell like it. Algae grows on plastic debris, and the animals can smell it when it breaks down. The odor is called dimethyl sulfide, which attracts hungry animals (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/news-jellyfish-plastic-cigarette-wrapper).
Think of it this way.
Say a turtle ingests a jellyfish, but that jellyfish has plastic under it’s hood. The turtle could get sick from that plastic once it is digested. Or, say the turtle incorrectly eats a plastic bag thinking it is a jellyfish. Either way, the turtle is going to have complications from the plastic.
It is looking like a lose-lose situation.
Let’s take a look at another marine animal effected by plastic pollution.
Sharks and Plastic Pollution
Ah yes, one of the biggest predators of the sea. They, too, suffer from plastic pollution.
Sharks have been recorded with plastic and even microplastics in their systems for quite some time now.
You might be thinking that ‘of course sharks are affected by plastic pollution, they just bite into anything and everything’. But what if I told you it is not just the sharks with the big teeth, it is also filter feeding sharks.
Filter feeding sharks just open their mouths wide and swim through the water, consuming massive amounts of both water and food, trying to only strain their small prey. They act similarly to a cheese cloth or window screen. However, due to plastic pollution, they are also ingesting toxins associated with plastic pollution (https://www.forbes.com/sites/melissacristinamarquez/2018/10/20/the-low-down-on-plastic-pollution-and-how-it-affects-sharks/?sh=2114b77722a9).
Professor Maria Fossi of the University of Siena in Italy told BBC this:
“Exposure to these plastic-associated toxins pose a major threat to the health of these animals since it can alter the hormones, which regulate the body’s growth and development, metabolism, and reproductive functions, among other things” (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42920383)
I find this so interesting, because this does not come to mind when I first think of plastic pollution. The ripple effect plastic pollution has on marine mammals seems to never end.
When I encountered that plastic debris when diving in the Turks and Caicos Islands, the word microplastic was not even in my vocabulary.
While I may not have known the severity of seeing that plastic so close to marine life at the time, I did follow my instinct to clean it up.
Sometimes, instinct is our best friend.
What if I had not cleaned that debris up, and my little eagle ray friend decided it was dinner?
Eagle rays feed on crustaceans on the sea floor. Their snout is like a shovel and they bury their mouth in the substrate to find benthic invertebrates (https://www.lamar.edu/arts-sciences/biology/study-abroad-belize/marine-critters/marine-critters-3/spotted-eagle-ray.html).
Imagine a bottle cap or some other type of pollution just happened to be on the sea floor and the eagle ray ingested it, thinking it was the shell of a crustacean.
It all just becomes so much heavier when you have seen it with your own eyes.
Is this what it will take for people to truly care about plastic pollution in our oceans? A first hand experience?
I sure hope this won’t have to be the case, don’t you?
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