Australia: Turtle sick to stomach with plastic

From The Northern Rivers Echo: Turtle sick to stomach with plastic
A green turtle was found dead at South Ballina two weeks ago by Australian Seabird Rescue, causing concern about marine debris.

The 40cm turtle, found dead at the high tide line, was taken to the Australian Seabird Rescue Wildlife Link Sanctuary in Ballina to determine the cause of death, which revealed the turtle had a total of 317 pieces of marine plastic debris in its stomach and intestines.

Australian Seabird Rescue general manager Rochelle Ferris said they are devastated at the find, which showed the turtle had ingested plastics like lollipop style sticks, plastics similar to ice cream container plastic, plastic bags, fishing line, packing tape and even plastic-coated electrical wire.

“This is the most extreme case of plastic ingestion we have seen in 15 years of rescuing sea turtles on the east coast of Australia,” Rochelle said. “The situation is not improving. The federal, state and territory governments need to act now on the Marine Debris Threat Abatement Plan to stem the flow of the garbage which is streaming into our oceans from our urban rivers and waterways.”

Rochelle said more needs to be done in long-term prevention of harmful marine debris. If not more funding will be needed for sea turtle hospitals.

Australian Seabird Rescue responds to around 40 plastic ingestion-related sea turtle strandings a year.

“We only operate on 250 kilometres of coastline. It makes me sick to imagine how many turtles are dying long, slow deaths across the country where there is no help,” Rochelle said.

For more information visit http://seabirdrescue.org/.