Plastic Ingestion

Ingestion of ocean plastic is a serious threat for all marine life. Floating plastic can be mistaken for jellyfish, a common food source for sea turtles.

Ingestion of plastics can cause serious harm to these animals, resulting in loss of nutrition, internal injury, intestinal blockage, starvation, and even death.

The majority of debris items are small plastic objects small enough to be ingested by wildlife, and ingestion has been confirmed from the ocean surface to great depths.

Plastic is ingested by all types of marine organisms, including zooplankton, one of the smallest life forms and blue whales, the largest animal on this planet.

In June of 2018 a pilot whale was found dead in Thailand with nearly 20 pounds of plastic bags inside its stomach. Click Here for the whole story

NOAA Marine Debris Ingestion Report

https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/what-we-know-about-entanglement-and-ingestion