6kg of plastic found in dead whale
JAKARTA: A dead sperm whale with nearly 6 kilogrammes of plastic waste in its stomach has been found on a beach in central Indonesia, a national park official said yesterday.
Park Chief Heri Santoso said the 9.5-metre-long rotting carcass was found on Monday washed ashore a tiny island in Wakatobi National Park, a marine national park in Southeast Sulawesi.
A team from the Wakatobi Marine and Fisheries Community Academy later found 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, two flip-flops, a nylon sack containing over 1,000 pieces of string, and other plastic debris in its stomach.
Putu Liza Mustika, coordinator of nongovernmental organisation Whale Stranding Indonesia, said the dead whale looked thin and suspected that the plastic debris contributed to its death.
Indonesia is the world’s second-largest plastic polluter after China, according to a study published in the journal Science in January. It produces 3.2 million tonnes of mismanaged plastic waste a year, of which 1.29 million tonnes ends up in the ocean, the study said.
Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Indonesia’s coordinating minister of maritime affairs, said the whale’s discovery should raise public awareness about the need to reduce plastic use, and had spurred the
government to take tougher measures to protect the ocean.
He said the government is making efforts to reduce the use of plastic to meet a government target of reducing plastic use by 70% by 2025.