Study: Lethal plastic trash now common in Greece's whales

A study of whales and dolphins that have washed up dead in Greece over a 20-year period has found alarmingly high levels of plastic trash mostly bags in the animals' stomachs, which can condemn them to a slow and painful death.

In the worst case, a researcher said Friday, a 5.3-metre (17-foot) young sperm whale beached on the Aegean island of Mykonos had swallowed 135 plastic items weighing a total of 3.2 kilograms (7 pounds). This blocked its stomach, grossly distending it, while the animal itself was emaciated and had starved to death.

Sperm whales are an endangered species already at high risk in the Mediterranean from deadly collisions with ships, entanglement in drift fishing nets and noise pollution from oil and gas exploration.

The study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, which organizers say was the first on such a scale in the Mediterranean, found that sperm whales were also the species worst affected by plastic ingestion.

Six out of ten specimens were found to have consumed plastics according to Alexandros Frantzis, scientific director of the Athens-based Pelagos Cetacean Research Institute that conducted the research.

"The amount of (debris) we found is very high, and should set off an alarm," he told The Associated Press. "It is now something common. ... It's not just that some random animal swallowed plastic."
"None of us is innocent," he said. "Without our knowledge or intent, some of (the plastic that is swallowed by whales or dolphins) may have passed through our hands. We may even have disposed of it in the trash, and it may have been blown away from an open landfill. These things travel, they have no borders."