Plastic and the
Plight of Sea Turtles
By Sarah Burnheimer, Marketing Communications Coordinator, South
Carolina Aquarium; photographs courtesy of the South Carolina Aquarium
B
ags, bottles, balloons, and straws are not what you’d order off a menu; they are not the
typical tasty snacks a sea turtle would go for, either. But with more plastic permeating
our ocean environment, these items can become all-too-common dietary options for
our beloved sea turtles.
Take a plastic bag, for example. When floating in the water, it looks oddly similar to a jellyfish. A
popped balloon, tending to shred into strips on one end, has the same disguise. When ingested—and
turtles swallow them frequently—all this plastic can form an impaction in a sea turtle’s stomach,
hindering any chance of survival if left untreated. With about eight million metric tons of plastic
landing in the oceans annually, we can see why sea turtles confuse the tasty with the trash.
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