Massive tangles of discarded fishing lines, ropes and plastic bags are harming marine life in the Pacific, with deep-diving whales swallowing thousands of plastic pieces in Hawaiian waters. A 13-year study of stranded short-finned pilot whales around the main Hawaiian Islands found that nearly 23 per cent of the animals examined had swallowed synthetic waste. Researchers at the Health and Stranding Lab at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa found that three adult males had each swallowed up to 12 pounds (5.4 kilograms) of ocean debris. The findings, published in the scientific journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, offer detailed evidence of how plastic pollution is entering the digestive systems of deep-sea predators. Full necropsies of the three whales revealed huge amounts of synthetic waste packed inside their stomachs. Tests showed that the whales had swallowed between 6,283 and 35,543 separate pieces of plastic larger than 5 millimetres, about the width of a standard pencil eraser.
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