A whale that washed ashore in Hawaii over the weekend likely died in part because it ate large volumes of fishing traps, fishing nets, plastic bags and other marine debris, scientists said Thursday, highlighting the threat to wildlife from the millions of tons of plastic that ends up in oceans every year.
The body of the 56-foot long, 120,000-pound animal was first noticed on a reef off Kauai on Friday. High tide brought it ashore on Saturday.
It's the first known case of a sperm whale in Hawaii waters ingesting discarded fishing gear, West said. Sperm whales travel across thousands of miles in the ocean so it's not clear where the debris came from.
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