River dolphin starved to death by a plastic bottle ring which closed its mouth

NEWS/OPINION: This is another story about the dangers of leaving plastic rings in the environment. It is a story about plastic pollution and careless humans. The victim? Wildlife of course. And many species of wildlife can be affected. My research indicates that this was an Amazon River dolphin or a ‘river dolphin’. Perhaps it was a Chinese river dolphin in the Yangtze River which is the world’s most plastic polluted river (read more below). River dolphins have very long beaks or snouts lined with teeth. The blue plastic bottle ring happened by chance, it seems, to circle the part of the mouth where it gets wider and permanently closed it preventing the dolphin from eating causing death by starvation according to the Twitter feed.

RELATED: Cut plastic rings to help protect wildlife

Amazon river dolphin starved to death as mouth was closed by a plastic ring
Amazon river dolphin starved to death as mouth was closed by a plastic ring. Image: Twitter.

This is the twitter post:

This dolphin was found on the beach. He starved to death because of the ring from a water bottle that hung on his muzzle. When you go to the beach, throw your trash in the bins. And not in the sand 😡!

This is how I suppose it happened (I am speculating). Somebody was using the Amazon or Yangtze River and had a large bottle of water, around the neck of which was a blue plastic ring to keep the screw top on. They discarded the plastic bottle into the environment (or the ring itself) and it found its way into the river where the plastic ring became disconnected from the bottle. It ended up floating around the river. Along comes a river dolphin and by pure chance the ring is positioned vertically as the dolphin swims and its mouth (beak or muzzle) enters straight through the ring.

The ring becomes lodged at the thickest point of the dolphin’s mouth. There is no way that the dolphin can get it off. It’s mouth is sealed closed permanently and that, at a stroke, is the end of its life. Death by starvation is unpleasant to say the least. We know dolphins are intelligent so this animal suffered because of one act of human carelessness.

We should remind ourselves too, that the entire oceans of the world are polluted with micro-plastic particles as are the rivers and almost any part of the planet. So, it is likely that this dolphin had plastic in its stomach anyway and even in its cellular structure. Humans have micro-plastic particles inside them. The world is entirely polluted with the stuff and nowhere near enough is being done about it.

It is a story of the apathetic human destroying the planet through carelessness, a ‘disease’ in the words of Sir David Attenborough, to wildlife and nature.

Freshwater fish suffer catastrophic decline due to dams in Yangtze River

Yangtze River

I have updated the page to include the possibility that this is/was a Chinese river dolphin. It is possible. China is the second biggest plastic polluter of the oceans after India. China discharges 70.7 million kg of plastic into the oceans annually. India is more or less double that figure by the way. They have a lot of explaining to do.

The Chinese River dolphin (baiji) is a freshwater dolphin and highly endangered or extinct. It is only found on the Yangtze River. If extinct it is the first dolphin species driven to extinction because of human behaviour.

My research indicates that the Yangtze River is by far the world’s worst in terms of discharging plastic pollution into the oceans. It is highly polluted with plastic and carries 333,000 metric tons of plastic to the oceans each year on my research. The website Statistica provides a far worse figure: it discharges 1.47 million tons of plastic per year into the oceans they say.

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Post Category: Marine wildlife > dolphins