Marine biologist finds 88 pounds of plastic inside dead whale's stomach

Marine biologist Darrell Blatchley shows plastic found in the stomach of a dead whale.
(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images)

A marine biologist in the Philippines made a startling discovery last week during the autopsy of a young Cuvier's beaked whale.

Darrell Blatchley found 88 pounds of plastic inside the whale's stomach, "compact to the point that its stomach was literally as hard as a baseball," he told NPR. "That means that this animal has been suffering not for days or weeks but for months or even a year or more." Blatchley, based in Davao, drove two hours to see the whale, which was found alive but vomiting blood. The whale died a few hours later.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.