Sea Turtle with Straw up its Nostril - "NO" TO PLASTIC STRAWS

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• published: 10 Aug 2015
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************WARNING: inappropiate/ strong language!********************** If you would like to support our research for the next three years, please think about donating to our GoFundMe Campaign http://gofundme.com/wuhvd6zj This video shows why plastic trash is detrimental to marine life and why especially drinking straws are one of the most useless items made out of plastic, especially if they end up as plastic trash in our oceans. SAY "NO" TO PLASTIC STRAWS, AND ANY KIND OF ONE-TIME USE PLASTIC ITEMS! UPDATES The Plastic Pollution Coalition just launched their "No Straw" Campaign in collaboration with us. Take the No-Straw-Pledge and learn more: http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/no-straw-please ----- The Story behind the viral video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLN52majCJw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MPHbpmP6_I OUR STORY: The research team around Christine Figgener, in collaboration with Dr. Nathan J. Robinson, found a male Olive Ridley sea turtle during a in-water research trip in Costa Rica. He had a 10-12 cm PLASTIC STRAW lodged in his nostril. After initially thinking that we are looking at a parasitic worm, and trying to remove it to identify it, we cut a small piece of to investigate further and finally identified what we were REALLY looking at. After a short debate about what we should do we removed it with the plier of a swiss army knive which was the only tool available on our small boat (not intended for overnight stays), since we were on the ocean, in a developing country, a few hours away from the coast and several hours away from any vet (probably days from any vet specialised in reptiles, not to mention sea turtles) and x-ray machines. Plus, we would have incured a penalty (up to time in jail) on ourselves by removing the turtle since that is beyond our research permits. He did very obviously not enjoy the procedure very much, but we hope that he is now able to breath more freely. The blood from the shoulder is from a 6mm skin biopsy we took previously to this event for a genetic study (part of our permitted research), which usually doesn't bleed much, but which started bleeding while restraining the turtle. We disinfected the air passageway with iodine and kept the turtle for observation before releasing him back into the wild. The bleeding stopped pretty much immediately after the removal of the straw. The turtle very likely ate the straw and regurgitated the straw where it ended up in the wrong passageway. The nasal cavity of sea turtles is connected directly to the palate (roof of the mouth) by a long nasopharyngeal duct. Copyright: Christine Figgener http://ocean.tamu.edu/people/students/figgenerchristine.html http://puranatura.zenfolio.com/ To use this video in a commercial player or in broadcasts, please email licensing@storyful.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BACKGROUND What are single-use plastic items? http://www.greeneriepa.org/single-use-plastic.html http://singleuseplastic.co.uk/what-were-about/ What can you do? REDUCE (REFUSE=STRAWS)/ RE-USE/ RECYCLE http://www.recycling-guide.org.uk/rrr.html Organise your own clean ups! An amazing plastic clean-up project is the TWO HANDS PROJECT, collect trash and post it on facebook! https://www.facebook.com/twohandsproject http://www.twohandsproject.org/ MORE INFO: http://micro2016.sciencesconf.org/ http://www.kcet.org/news/redefine/reduce/commentary-1/cut-down-on-plastic-pollution-a-sip-at-a-time.html http://www.plasticchange.org/en/om-plastic-change/ http:/theoceancleanup.com Please, excuse the French throughout the video!