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According to CSIRO researchers, scientists have linked the amount of plastic consumed by a sea turtle with the probability of its death. According to CSIRO researchers, it is estimated that half of sea turtles have plastic in their intestines.
CSIRO said it was previously unclear how much plastic could kill sea turtles and whether they could ingest it without causing significant damage.
A study, published today in Scientific Reports, revealed that once a turtle had 14 pieces of plastic in its gut, it had a 50% chance of causing death.
Chris Wilcox, principal investigator at CSIRO in Hobart, estimates that 52% of sea turtles have plastic in their stomachs.
"What we found out is that when the turtle eats the first piece of plastic, it has about 20% chance of dying because of that single piece of plastic."
"We find hundreds of pieces of plastic in some turtles, from thin film to rope to fishing line, everything you see in your daily life in a turtle."
Dr. Wilcox stated that they were not sure of the impact of plastic on sea turtles.
"It's very common but it's possible that turtles can live with plastic in their gut without any problem," he said, "it may be relatively deadly."
"All that plastic was in someone's hand at one time or another and it's really about changing the way we act around our garbage."
CSIRO research assistant, Qamar Schuyler, said he has studied nearly 1,000 turtles found dead and stranded on beaches around Australia.
"In a tiny flat turtle, we found whole apple stickers, the stickers that come on the fruit," she said.
"We find a lot of soft plastics in older animals, it could be plastic bags, lollipop packaging."
Dr. Schuyler said the next step was to estimate the impact of plastic on turtle populations.
"Now that we know how much plastic it takes to kill a turtle, we can combine that with previous work that we did that looked at the likelihood of plastic ingestion by turtles," she said.
"We can come up with a global estimate of turtle mass mortality worldwide."
Kathy Townsend, professor of animal ecology at Sunshine Coast University, said sea turtles in different parts of the world had varying amounts of debris in their gut.
"It really depends on what part of the world you look at," she said.
A recent study in Uruguay found that almost 100% of marine turtles had marine debris in their intestines.
"We are not talking about small pieces, we are talking about hundreds of pieces," said Dr. Townsend.
Topics:
animal science,
environmental impact,
oceans and reefs,
Hobart 7000,
heap
Australia
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