Opinion: Plastics plague our oceans, killing marine mammals
A humpback whale was spotted off San Diego’s coast on Valentine’s Day 2020, entangled in a green plastic fishing net. It struggled to migrate up California’s coast, leaping repeatedly to desperately try to rid itself of the net. But rescuers were unable to safely get close enough to try to cut the net off. … The plague of plastic in our oceans is steadily worsening, taking an increasingly deadly toll on whales, dolphins, seals and other marine mammals, not to mention other marine life.
-Written by Dave Phillips, executive director of Earth Island Institute, a nonprofit environmental organization based in Berkeley; and Mark J. Palmer, a biologist and the associate director of Earth Island Institute’s International Marine Mammal Project.