Thank you for visiting our animal defence section. Before reading our main essay, please join us in a moment of compassion and reflection.
The wheels of business and human food compulsions are implacable and totally lacking in compassion. This is a downed cow, badly hurt, but still being dragged to slaughter. Click on this image to fully appreciate this horror repeated millions of times every day around the world. With plentiful non-animal meat substitutes that fool the palate, there is no longer reason for this senseless suffering. Meat consumption is a serious ecoanimal crime. The tyranny of the palate must be broken. Please consider changing your habits in this regard.
COMPILED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
Published on Aug 10, 2015
This is the original video! Filmed by Christine Figgener, marine biologist at Texas A&M University.
This video shows graphically why plastic waste is detrimental to marine life, especially single-use plastics (such as straws, which are one of the most redundant items). This turtle suffers from an item that is human-made and used by most of us frequently.
After initially thinking that we are looking at a parasitic worm, and trying to remove it to identify it, we cut a small piece off to investigate further and finally identified what we were REALLY looking at. [It's amazing it took this team so long to identify the obvious, that it was a straw or some plastic canule in the nostril, and certainly NOT a parasitic worm! Duh. And they repeatedly grabbed the straw poorly, risking losing the possibiity of extracting it. —Eds)
After a short debate about what we should do we removed it with the plier of a swiss army knife 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 incurred 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. [For field researchers in oceanic areas you should always carry a basic tool set, including a cutting instrument, and some pliers type of insrument.—Ed)
The research team around Christine Figgener (Texas A&M University) found a male Olive Ridley sea turtle during an in-water research trip in Costa Rica. He had a 10-12 cm PLASTIC STRAW lodged in his nostril and they removed it. SAY "NO" TO PLASTIC STRAWS, AND ANY KIND OF ONE-TIME USE PLASTIC ITEMS! If you would like to support our research and conservation efforts in Costa Rica, please think about donating to our GoFundMe Campaign http://gofundme.com/wuhvd6zj
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....
[premium_newsticker id=”154171″]
