Shopping bags, fishing nets, packaging. These were the waste items found in the stomach of the sperm whale stranded on the Sardinian coast, which was about to give birth.
Never before had such a quantity of plastic been found in the stomach of a sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus). At least not in Italy. While some finds have recorded as much as 80 kilograms of plastic, the sperm whale stranded in Sardinia had swallowed over 20 kilograms of it, mistaking it for food. A mistake that in all likelihood proved fatal to her and to the calf she was carrying. The specimen was 8 metres long, weighed around 12 tonnes, and was probably between 25 and 30 years old.
The sighting took place on the beaches of Porto Cervo on 28 March 2019 and was made public thanks to the work of SeaMe, an association dedicated to the protection and conservation of the sea and its resources, which, in collaboration with the local authorities, the Maddalena National Park authority, the Forestry Carabinieri and veterinarians from the Istituto Zooprofilattico of Sassari and the University of Padua, carried out the initial surveys and attempted to establish the possible causes of the cetacean's death.
"We found 22 kilograms of plastic in the animal's stomach, a find we consider anomalous," Sandro Mazzariol, a veterinarian and associate professor at the University of Padua and head of the veterinary unit of the Agripolis department, who performed the autopsy on the cetacean, told LifeGate. "Anomalous because this is one of the largest finds in the Mediterranean and certainly the largest in Italy."
While the mammal's stomach had room for 34 kilograms of food, it was mostly filled with plastic waste. The waste was probably swallowed at depths of over 1,500 metres in the Caprera canyon, where cetaceans typically spend their time searching for food. These animals consume the equivalent of 3 per cent of their body weight in food every day. Although at this stage it is not yet possible to establish the exact cause of death, "the plastic certainly reduced the amount of food the animal could take in, and having fewer nutrients altered its physiological responses. If it is not the main cause, it is certainly a co-factor," Mazzariol explained.
A video published by the association Seame clearly shows fragments of a corrugated pipe and a detergent bag with the brand name and barcode still visible, not on sale in Italy. There were also fragments of disposable plates and cutlery. Everyday objects that we find practically everywhere, which end up in our seas, often carried there by the ships that cross the Mediterranean.
The Mediterranean today is one of the seas with the highest concentration of plastics and microplastics, and this only increases the risk of wildlife becoming involved in incidents that can often prove fatal. But something appears to be moving: the news of these days is the final approval of the ban on single-use plastic items, such as cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers and balloon sticks, by 2021. What remains of this story is that two sperm whales have died, partly as a result of pollution caused by humans. And we will never know how long they might have lived.