Turtles dying from eating trash show plastics scourge

KALBA: The hawksbill sea turtle lay belly-up on the metal autopsy table, its shell ashen and stomach taut.
A week ago, the adolescent turtle washed up on a beach in Kalba, a city on the east coast of the UAE. 
Once unspoiled, the coast of mangrove trees is now fouled by piles of trash dragged from nearby landfills. Strewn across the shore are plastic bags, packages, bottle caps — and far too often, dead turtles.
At first, Fadi Yaghmour, a marine expert who has examined some 200 turtles for the first research on the subject from the Middle East, extracted typical fare from the carcass — squid beaks and oysters.
Then, a culprit for the creature’s demise became clear: Shriveled balloons and plastic foam, some of the last things the turtle ate.
“It’s probably malnourished,” Yaghmour said as he worked. Plastic clogs turtles’ intestinal tracts, he said, and can cause them to starve.
This turtle is one of 64 retrieved from the shores of Kalba and Khor Fakkan, in Sharjah, to be analyzed in Yaghmour’s lab. His team of researchers has published a new study in the Marine Pollution Bulletin that seeks to document the damage and danger of the throwaway plastic that has surged in use around the world and in the UAE, along with other marine debris. When discarded, plastic clogs waterways and chokes animals — not just sea turtles but whales, birds and all sorts of life.
A staggering 75 percent of all dead green turtles and 57 percent of all loggerhead turtles in Sharjah had eaten marine debris, including plastic bags, bottle caps, rope and fishing nets, the study found. The only other research from the region, published in 1985, found that none of the studied turtles in the Gulf of Oman had eaten plastic.