Pregnant sperm whale found dead with 22 kg of plastic in stomach

The carcass of a pregnant sperm whale that washed up in Sardinia, Italy, last week had 22 kilograms (49 pounds) of plastic in its stomach, and was carrying a dead fetus. The dead whale was discovered on a patch of rocky shoreline, which was eight meters (26 feet) long.

That garbage included garbage bags, fishing nets, lines, tubes, the bag of a washing machine liquid still identifiable, with brand and barcode and other objects no longer identifiable. Only a third of the whale’s stomach contents, about 12 kilogrammes, were squid beaks, the leftovers from its favourite food.

More than 95 per cent of the waste floating in the Mediterranean and lying on its beaches is plastic, according to a WWF study released in 2018, and the more insidious small fragments, called microplastics, have reached record concentration levels.