By Hauwa Ali
A baby sea turtle rescued from Sydney beach excreted pure plastic for six days consecutively; an indication of how much plastic it had eaten in the ocean.
According toTaronga zoo’s wildlife hospital, the 127-gram hatchling was found lying on its back in a rockpool near Sydney’s Tamarama beach, missing one of its four flippers, and had a hole in its shell.
The carers said the turtle had eaten so much plastics that it took six days straight to get it excreted from its system.
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“But then it started to defecate, and it defecated plastic for six days. No faeces came out, just pure plastic,” the Taronga veterinary nurse Sarah Male said.
“It was all different sizes, colours and compositions. Some were hard, some were sharp, and with some, you could tell the plastic had writing on it. This is all some of these poor little things are eating. There’s so much plastic around they’re just consuming it as their first initial food,” she said.
According to Male, the turtlehas returned to health and now weighs almost 400g, as a “bagel with flippers”.
She says, despite progress, it could be a whole year before he is released back into the wild and coastal waters because tiny hatchlings are particularly vulnerable to prey, and they want the animal to have the best chance of life; as well as size, ocean temperatures are also a factor – warmer waters are better for turtles.
“If everybody just takes a little bit of their time to pick up a bit of rubbish – it doesn’t have to be on the beach – then hopefully we can make a difference,” Male said.
According to United Nations, Up to 12 million tonnes of plastics are being swept into the oceans annually and marine animals being killed by plastics.
While most plastics are expected to remain intact for decades or centuries after use, those that do erode end up as micro-plastics, consumed by fish and other marine wildlife, quickly making their way into the global food chain.
