By nature, a short-finned pilot whale is blessed with a long, playful life. If female, it can live up to 60 years. It can find a mate at the age of 9, give birth at 10, keep calving one at a time until it’s 40, and then go through menopause. But by some unfortunate turn, as in the case of a female pilot whale recently found off the coast of Bolinao, Pangasinan, its life could be ended prematurely by the ingestion of plastics. 

Pilot whales, or Globicephala macrorhynchus, can dive to a depth of 1,000 meters in search of a good meal. They are one of 72 species of toothed whales in the dolphin family that are night eaters. They enjoy eating dinner like a king, their diet consisting of generous servings of squid and octopus and some mackerel and cod. 

The dolphin found by fishers in Pangasinan waters early on April 8 could no longer swim, dive, or eat. It was still young but was slowed and weakened by almost a kilo of plastics lodged in its gut. It expired at a little past 8 a.m.

According to the necropsy results, the dolphin likely died from starvation. The first chamber of the stomach, where the primary breakdown of food occurs, was empty. The digestive tract was so fatally obstructed that the dolphin could no longer take in food. Cut open, the carcass’ ventral side exposed a thick sludge of latex and cellophane so thick that the intestines could barely be seen. 

Dr. Arnold dela Cruz, the Alaminos City veterinarian who performed the necropsy, thinks it was the small empty plastic bottle of bleach that finally killed the dolphin.

The vet said the dolphin was emaciated—a telltale sign of starvation. “Its dorsal part was thin, with a distinct peanut-shaped head.” (In dolphin terms, a peanut head is a condition marked by extreme loss of fat. The dolphin’s head was marked by a hollow area behind the blowhole, looking like the dip in a peanut shell.) 

Marine researchers Susanne Kühn and Jan Andries van Franeker of the Wageningen Marine Research in the Netherlands found that 61% of toothed whales ingest marine litter. Of the 2,495 dolphins they studied, 205 were found to have ingested plastics. 

Plastics begin to accumulate and take up space inside a dolphin’s body. Left undigested over time, the plastic buildup creates a false sense of satiation, tricking the dolphin into believing it is already full when it’s not. Soon, the plastics begin to act like a parasite, depriving the host of the vital nutrients it gets from feeding on actual prey.

Prey or plastic?

In a day, a dolphin eats at a rate of 4% to 5.9% of its body weight. A mature female of 1,000 kilograms, for example, can consume a daily equivalent of an entire sack of rice and still want more for its satisfaction. With an appetite that big, and with millions of tons of marine litter available, the dolphin would find it impossible to be a picky eater, especially because it swallows its food whole. 

A dolphin does not chew its food. It has teeth, seven to nine each in a row, but it lets its stomach do the chewing. This is why finding nasty garbage in its gut is not unusual. 

And it cannot tell a grocery bag from a squid, or a five-fingered latex glove from an eight-armed octopus. 

This is not to say that pilot whales are dumb. Pilot whales, in fact, have twice as many neurons as humans, and brains double the size as ours. But, just like us, they get confused, too.

Every day, around 2,000 truckloads of plastic waste are dumped into oceans, rivers, and lakes, making it increasingly confusing for pilot whales to tell which is prey and which is plastic. 

Also, pilot whales are deep-diving feeders. They can plunge to the bottom of the ocean foraging for food. At below 800 meters, they can reach an extremely dark place where it is perpetually midnight. Thus, instead of sight, they rely on sound to start their evening hunt. 

Pilot whales have a highly developed sense of hearing that helps them navigate the abyss—a sensory ability called echolocation. (Think bats but underwater.) They capture tonal signals to track their target. They emit sound waves by vibrating their phonic lips—basically, their nostrils tucked below the blowhole creating clicks and whistles—and amplify these sounds through their bulbous head (called melon). Auditory signals—or acoustic signatures, in the term of experts—help them make a mental map of their surroundings, especially in the presence of their prey. 

They are sufficiently sensitive to their prey’s acoustic signatures to spot a giant squid lurking on the ocean floor. But certain plastic debris can mimic the acoustic signatures of prey. Thus, they can hardly tell the difference between a cephalopod and cellophane.

Playful accidents

A dolphin’s lethal interaction with plastics does not always occur as accidental swallows during a meal. Sometimes, it happens during playtime. 

Two psychologists from the University of Southern Mississippi, Stan A. Kuczaj and Lauren E. Highfill, studied the collaborative behavior of dolphins at play. One day, while snorkeling, they encountered three wild-toothed dolphins—a juvenile and two adults—swimming nearby. 

One adult was trailing a piece of plastic from one of its lower fins. It passed the plastic to its fluke (or tail) and let it go for the second adult to catch with its mouth. This second adult then swam ahead of the others, released the plastic, and passed it to the trailing adult to catch it again with its fin. The two adults kept taking turns, and occasionally passed the plastic near the juvenile’s mouth. 

This playful exchange—as if playing ball in the open sea—went on for the next 15 minutes. In observing the dolphins’ interaction, the two psychologists realized that the rule of the game was not competition but cooperative play.

Dolphins are naturally playful creatures. But while their playing with plastics may seem enjoyable to watch, plastics now present a serious threat to their survival.

Global pandemic

Plastics can be disposed of very quickly but they take 500 years to decompose. Plastics have created a global problem that is now turning into a silent pandemic.

One human dies every 30 seconds from diseases related to mismanaged waste. Make that a year, and there are a million lives lost. Unfortunately, the growing number of deaths has been dangerously high in low- and middle-income countries like the Philippines. 

While there is a growing consensus that plastic pollution is dangerous to human health, the production of plastic worldwide is relentless. The United Nations Environment Program predicts that from 1950 to 2050, the global plastic production could reach 34,000 million tons. Yet, only less than 10% of plastics gets recycled. And the remaining plastics? There’s a high chance they add to nearly 200 million tons of plastics now polluting Earth’s oceans.

These plastic wastes weather time, breaking down into tiny particles that drift into oceans and other bodies of waters like plankton. They continue their aimless voyage until a hungry fish mistakes them for food. Eventually, the fish ends up on our plate, we eat it, and, with it, the tiny plastics slip into our mouths, down our throats, and eventually swim into our bloodstream. 

Microplastics have long become part of the human diet, just as they have for the dolphins’ meals. Every day, a person ingests approximately 106-142 microplastic particles from food and drinks. If inhalation is added, the number nearly doubles. 

These current trends reveal how marine pollution has drastically worsened since plastics were left at humanity’s disposal. Plastics are now virtually everywhere, and they get inside us through the mouth, nose, and skin. They come from t-shirts to toothbrushes, from Q-tips to floss, from the Mariana Trench to the Himalayas. They are so ubiquitous that there is an entirely new ecosystem known as “plastisphere.”

As we enter this new space, a word of warning: The plastisphere can be a joyless, ruthless place. It is where the plastic lives and the dolphin dies. And death is not the dolphin’s fate alone.

Read more: Dolphin discovery hints at unexplored biodiversity-rich marine habitat