Each Day, Blue Whales Consume 10 Million Pieces Of Plastic

Approximately ten million pieces of microplastic are consumed by blue whales every day, according to estimates published recently, which support the notion that microplastic pollution has a greater impact than previously thought.

According to a local Arabic newspaper, plastic fragments have been found both in ocean depths and on mountain tops.

An estimate of how much microplastic whales consume was published in Nature Communications by a number of researchers.

Scientists tracked the movements of 191 bluefin and humpback whales off the coast of California with the help of a kind of label.

Essentially, it's like having an Apple Watch on the back of a whale, according to the study's lead author, Sherrill Kahane Report of California State University at Fullerton.

Based on the data collected, the whale specialist told AFP that these animals feed mainly between 50 and 250 metres below the surface, where microplastics are most concentrated.

After modeling three scenarios, the researchers calculated the whales' daily 'bite' size and what they were filtering. It is likely that blue whales consume up to 10 million microplastics each day.

According to the study, the largest animal on earth consumes up to 43.6 kilograms of microplastics every day.

As whales traverse the ocean, this number automatically leads to the belief that they ingest large amounts of microplastics. However, researchers found that this was not the case. The microplastics entered whales' bodies because they were already inside their prey.

This was deemed "worrying" since humans eat these prey as well. "We also eat anchovies and sardines," she said, adding that "krill (small crustaceans shaped like shrimp) are the foundation of the marine food chain."

It has been shown in previous research that krill eat microplastic particles in tanks containing them. Having estimated the amount of plastic ingested by whales, researchers are trying to determine the extent of the damage caused by it.

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