Source:
https://scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3187249/rescued-australia-turtle-pooped-plastic-6-days-luck-was-his
Asia/ Australasia

Rescued Australia turtle pooped plastic for 6 days: ‘Luck was on his side, he excreted all of it out’

  • A tiny turtle rescued by a Sydney zoo took six days to pass all the plastic in his system. A veterinary nurse said he was lucky to survive
  • Humans dump roughly 8 million tonnes of plastic in the world’s oceans every year. Plastic is projected to outweigh fish by 2050, according to the WWF
The turtle that was rescued by Sydney’s Taronga Zoo and defecated six days of plastic. Photo: Twitter / @TarongaZoo

A tiny turtle who was rescued by the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, pooped plastic for six days.

In a video on the Zoo’s Twitter page, veterinary nurse Sarah Male explains that the little turtle was rescued from a nearby beach with a back flipper “chomped” off.

But when he started to have bowel movements, “he defecated six days of plastic. No faeces came out, just pure plastic,” she said.

“Luck was on his side … he excreted all of it out” she said. He has now passed all the plastic in his system.

Male said most injuries they see are caused by ingesting plastics and fishing lines.

According to the Taronga Zoo website, the hospital rehabilitates and releases over 80 marine turtles every year.

They also treat other native animals and have released over 50,000 animals back into the wild since they opened in the 1970s.

Humans dump roughly 8 million tonnes of plastic into the sea every year, with the World Wide Fund for Nature Inc. (WWF) saying that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is projected to outweigh fish by 2050.

The WWF also states that 90 per cent of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs, and half of marine turtles have eaten plastic.

A watchdog report by Oceana found that, in 2020, US e-commerce giant Amazon alone dumped 23.5 million pounds (10.7 million kg) of plastic into the world’s oceans.

At the end of 2021, a non-profit group launched called The Ocean Cleanup, an organisation dedicated to cleaning plastics from the seas.

Their two-and-a-half-month mission brought back 64,000 pounds (29,030 kg) of trash, which included a mannequin and a refrigerator.

Read the original article on Business Insider