*Darrell Blatchley pulling
A dead whale washed up in the Philippines and marine biologists found a total of 40kg (88 pounds) of plastic waste inside its stomach.
The plastic-choked mammal was a Cuvier’s beaked whale. Its dead body was recovered by workers at D’Bone Collector Museum east of Davao City earlier this month.
In a post on their official Facebook page, the museum management announced the animal was filled with “the most plastic we have ever seen in a whale”.
The plastic menagerie includes sixteen rice sacks as well as “multiple shopping bags”.
The museum’s founder and president, Darrell Blatchley, told CNN that he was absolutely shocked by the gruesome sight.
“It was so big, the plastic was beginning calcification,” he said.
The incident comes at a time when the Philippines are facing a real plastic apocalypse. In fact, just five Asian nations – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand account for over sixty percent of the plastic waste that ends up in oceans, a recent survey reveals.
This is the second whale that has been killed by plastic waste in less than a year. In June 2018, a pilot whale was washed up dead in Thailand. The autopsy revealed it had swollen as much as eighty plastic bags.
