The caracas of a sperm whale that washed ashore in Indonesia had nearly 13 pounds of plastic waste in its stomach — including 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags and two flip-flops, the BBC reported Tuesday.
The 31-foot whale carcass was found near Kapota Island in the Wakatobi National Park on Monday.
"Although we have not been able to deduce the cause of death, the facts that we see are truly awful," Dwi Suprapti, a marine species conservation co-ordinator at WWF Indonesia, told the Associated Press.
She said the carcass was too decayed to determine the cause of death.
In a tweet, WWF Indonesia gave the breakdown of what was found inside the animal: "Hard plastic (19 pieces, 140g), plastic bottles (4 pieces, 150g), plastic bags (25 pieces, 260g), flip-flops (2 pieces, 270g), pieces of string (3.26kg) & plastic cups (115 pieces, 750g)."
Five Asian nations – China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand – account for up to 60 percent of the plastic waste that ends up in oceans, according to a 2015 report by environmental campaigner Ocean Conservancy and the McKinsey Center for Business and Environment, the BBC reported.
At the end of last year, the UN said marine life was facing "irreparable damage" from the approximately 10m tons of plastic waste ending up in the oceans every year, the BBC reported.
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