Our Shame: A Young Whale Was Found Dead With 100 Kg Of Plastic-Human Garbage In Its Stomach

Our waste has claimed the life of yet another whale, this time in Scotland. A giant sperm whale was found stranded on a beach in Scotland with its stomach filled with a ball-full of human trash. Fishing nets, rope bundles, plastic cups, gloves, tubing were a few of the things found inside the poor whale¡¯s stomach, weighing a whopping 100 kilograms.

According to the official statement by the Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme, "All this material was in a huge ball in the stomach, and some of it looked like it had been there for some time. Whilst it is certainly plausible that this amount of debris was a factor in its live stranding, we actually couldn't find evidence that this had impacted or obstructed the intestines."

The statement further added, "This amount of plastic in the stomach is nonetheless horrific, must have compromised digestion, and serves to demonstrate, yet again, the hazards that marine litter and lost or discarded fishing gear can cause to marine life."

The whale was young in age and was alive when it stranded on the banks of Luskentyre Beach on the Isle of Harris in northern Scotland on November 28th. The intestines of the whale was full of the trash that resulted in the gargantuan fish to die.

Scottish Marine Animal Strandings Scheme, a group funded by the Scottish and U.K. governments to track marine animal strandings on Scottish coastlines shared the video of the autopsy of the whale on Facebook. The sperm whale was later buried on site as it was too large to be taken elsewhere.

The experts feel that most of the trash that the poor whale swallowed seems to have originated from the fishing industry. They are working on looking for a link to really understand how it ended up there.