This is the saddest environmental story I've read in years.

A young adult at 13.5 meters was taken for a necropsy at the port of Harlington. The sperm whale had plastic in its stomach, an increasing common phenomenon say researchers at the Biodiversity Centre Naturalis.

And that last part is what makes it sad.

In March of this year, a 10 meter long sperm whale washed up on Spain's South Coast. This whale had swallowed 59 different plastic items totaling over 37 pounds. Most of this plastic consisted of transparent sheeting used to build greenhouses in Almeria and Grenada for the purpose of tomatoes for the European market. The rest was plastic bags, nine meters of rope, two stretches of hosepipe, two small flower pots, and a plastic spray canister. Cause of death was intestinal blockage. These are not uncommon incidents. In 1989, a stranded sperm whale in the Lavezzi Islands in the Tyrrhenian Sea died of a stomach obstruction after accidentally ingesting plastic bags and 100 feet of plastic sheeting. In 1990, a sperm whale examined for pathology in Iceland died of an obstruction of the gut with plastic marine debris. In August of 2008, a sperm whale washed up in Point Reyes, California with 450 pounds of fishing net, rope, and plastic bags in its stomach. The California Marine Mammal Stranding Database tells of another sperm whale stranded in 2008 with stomach contents that included an extensive amount of netting from discarded fishing gear.

We really have become the champions of not giving a fk. No species in the history of creation has given less of a fk than we have. We kill the oceans and we kill ourselves? Too bad, but we don't give a fk. Besides, we're melting the Arctic -- because, basically, we don't give a fk -- so we're making more ocean about which not to give a fk anyway, so it's all good.

And, here'sone they missed.

In 20 years of examining more than 200 whale carcasses, research scientist John Calambokidis says Tuesday he has never seen so much trash in a whale's stomach. Founding member of the Cascadia Research Collective in Olympia, Calambokidis says he does not yet know what caused the whale's death, and tests are continuing. "It kind of dramatizes the legacy of what we leave at the bottom," Calambokidis said. The sediment at the bottom of Puget Sound bays is loaded with other contaminants, "and an animal feeding and being exposed to this kind of garbage is also being exposed to those, too." Gray whales are bottom feeders.

They're not the only ones.

Headshot of Charles P. Pierce
Charles P. Pierce

Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976. He lives near Boston and has three children.