Padre Island National Seashore, National Park Service, Corpus Christi, TX 78418, United States of America; Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, United States of America.
Padre Island National Seashore, National Park Service, Corpus Christi, TX 78418, United States of America.
Mar Pollut Bull. 2021 Dec;173(Pt B):113111. doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.113111. Epub 2021 Nov 4.
Despite exponential growth of anthropogenic marine debris in recent decades, plastic ingestion by marine turtles in the Gulf of Mexico is not well understood. Gastrointestinal tracts were examined from 464 green turtles that stranded in Texas between 1987 and 2019, and 226 turtles ingested plastic (48.7%). This number doubled from 32.5% in 1987-1999 to 65.5% in 2019, but mass of ingested items was lowest in 2019. No turtles showed evidence of death directly related to plastic ingestion. Compared to other regions, plastic ingestion was low. Small turtles (<25 cm straight carapace length) ingested plastic more frequently and in greater amounts than larger turtles. Small turtles also ingested more hard plastic while larger turtles ingested more sheet-like and thread-like plastics, which may correspond to size-based habitat shifts. This is among the largest marine turtle ingestion studies to date and demonstrates an increasing prevalence of plastic ingestion.
尽管近几十年来人为海洋垃圾呈指数级增长，但墨西哥湾的海洋龟类吞食塑料的情况仍未得到很好的了解。我们检查了 1987 年至 2019 年间在德克萨斯州搁浅的 464 只绿海龟的消化道，其中 226 只（48.7%）吞食了塑料。这一数字比 1987 年至 1999 年的 32.5%翻了一番，达到 2019 年的 65.5%，但 2019 年吞食的物品质量最低。没有海龟有直接因吞食塑料而死亡的证据。与其他地区相比，该地区海龟吞食塑料的情况较少。小海龟（<25 厘米的甲长）比大海龟更频繁、更大量地吞食塑料。小海龟还吞食了更多的硬塑料，而大海龟则吞食了更多片状和线状塑料，这可能与基于大小的栖息地变化相对应。这是迄今为止最大的海龟吞食研究之一，表明海龟吞食塑料的情况越来越普遍。
