Associated Press 20 Nov 18;
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A dead whale that washed ashore in eastern Indonesia had a large lump of plastic waste in its stomach, including drinking cups and flip-flops, a park official said Tuesday, causing concern among environmentalists and government officials in one of the world’s largest plastic polluting countries.
Rescuers from Wakatobi National Park found the rotting carcass of the 9.5-meter (31-foot) sperm whale late Monday near the park in Southeast Sulawesi province after receiving a report from environmentalists that villagers had surrounded the dead whale and were beginning to butcher the rotting carcass, park chief Heri Santoso said.
Santoso said researchers from wildlife conservation group WWF and the park’s conservation academy found about 5.9 kilograms (13 pounds) of plastic waste in the animal’s stomach containing 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, 2 flip-flops, a nylon sack and more than 1,000 other assorted pieces of plastic.
“Although we have not been able to deduce the cause of death, the facts that we see are truly awful,” said Dwi Suprapti, a marine species conservation coordinator at WWF Indonesia.
She said it was not possible to determine if the plastic had caused the whale’s death because of the animal’s advanced state of decay.
Indonesia, an archipelago of 260 million people, 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 tons of mismanaged plastic waste a year, of which 1.29 million tons 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.
“I’m so sad to hear this,” said Pandjaitan, who recently has campaigned for less use of plastic. “It is possible that many other marine animals are also contaminated with plastic waste and this is very dangerous for our lives.”
He said the government is making efforts to reduce the use of plastic, including urging shops not to provide plastic bags for customers and teaching about the problem in schools nationwide to meet a government target of reducing plastic use by 70 percent by 2025.
“This big ambition can be achieved if people learn to understand that plastic waste is a common enemy,” he told The Associated Press.
6 kg of garbage found in dead whale's stomach in Wakatobi
News Desk The Jakarta Post 20 Nov 18;
A team from Wakatobi National Park found on Monday about 5.9 kilograms of garbage inside the stomach of a dead whale that had beached on Kapota Island, Southeast Sulawesi.
The team, assisted by researchers from the Academy of Marine and Fisheries Community in Wakatobi, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and locals, identified the animal as a sperm whale. It measured 9.5 meters in length and 4.37 wide, according to a release from the Environment and Forestry Ministry made available on Tuesday.
The head of the park, Heri Santoso, said when his team found the whale on Sunday, it had already begun to decompose.
A tweet from the WWF explained that due to its condition, the team could not confirm whether the garbage had been the cause of the whale's death.
The body will be buried on Tuesday on Kolowawa Beach in North Kapota village, he said.
Researchers opened the animal’s stomach and found 115 plastic cups (750 grams), 19 hard plastic pieces (140 grams), four plastic bottles (150 grams), 25 plastic bags (260 grams), six wood splinters (740 grams), two rubber sandals (270 grams), one nylon sack (200 grams) and more than 1,000 pieces of plastic rope (3,260 grams). The total weight of the wet garbage was 5.9 kilograms.
A picture from WWF of the stomach's content showed that the whale had swallowed what looked like a piece of melamine dining plate. (evi)
