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!
Our research team in collaboration with Christine Figgener and Dr. Nathan J. Robinson found a male Olive Ridley sea turtle during our 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 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, since we were on the ocean a few hours away from the coast and several hours away from any vet and x-ray machines. Plus, we would have incured a penalty on ourselves by removing the turtle since that is beyond our resarch permits. He did very obviously not enjoy the procedure very much, but we hope that he is now able to breath more freely.
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.
