A baby turtle washed up in Boca Raton, Florida with 104 pieces of plastic in its belly.
The Gumbo Limbo Nature Center, a coastal preserve park and education research centre, shared a photo of the tiny loggerhead sea turtle next to even more smaller pieces of plastic.
“It was weak and emaciated. I could just tell it wasn’t doing well,” said Emily Mirowski, a sea turtle rehabilitation assistant who examined the turtle.
Mirowski dissected the turtle after it died and found the plastic, ranging from balloons to bottle labels.
The turtle, so tiny it could fit in the palm of your hand, had ingested 104 pieces of random plastic that had been discarded by humans.
Many of the sea turtles in the center were brought in to the facility because they were sick from eating too much plastic.
Plastic, especially single use plastic, causes major harm to the oceans and seas around the world.
It’s particularly hard on sea turtles because the plastic creates air inside their system and they cannot dive down for food leaving them to flounder on the surface and ultimately starving to death.