Thursday, March 24, 2011

Sea turtles: garbage in, garbage out

Sea turtles eat garbage. It's not because they're stupid, it's just that our garbage looks like their food.

Imagine you found a yummy-looking box of chocolates that your roommate left on the kitchen table and took a big bite only to find out it was dog poop in disguise. Yucck, that's how we trick sea turtles into doing something stupid.

How much plastic can one sea turtle eat? Look at this photo (right) of the plastic found in the stomach of one green sea turtle. And consider the story of one sea turtle that pooped plastic for a month after getting a blockage cleaned out of its gut. And those are just two of the turtles we know about.

Sea turtles are really smart at being sea turtles. And that means eating floaty, semi-transparent jellyfish and other sea creatures. Oooops, and also plastic. After 200 million years of these grand reptiles swimming in earth's oceans, will they be done in by our plastic garbage (and getting caught by fishing gear)?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

i think it is wrong wat there doing to turtles:(