After You See What They Pull Out Of This Sea Turtle’s Nose You Will Never Litter Again!

Off the pacific coast of Costa Rica, a team of marine biologists who were researching turtles, brought a grown, male olive ridley sea turtle aboard their boat.  They were shocked to find something stuck inside his left nostril which they believed to be a worm of some kind.

Seeing that the turtle’s breathing was impeded they proceeded to attempt to dislodge it as carefully as possible.  They were concerned that perhaps this worm had lodged into the turtle’s brain stem. Feeling that they had no choice but to dislodge it, in order to save the turtle’s life, they were really concerned that moving it the wrong way could also end in it’s demise.

After working on it’s removal for several minutes they cut off a piece of it to discern what it actually was.  They were shocked and angered to discover that it was not anything organic.  Rather it was something completely man-made and a result of improper recycling that is contaminating our oceans and endangering sea life.

After nearly 8 minutes of carefully pulling at the lodged object, they pulled out a 10-12 inch plastic drinking straw!  Unfortunately they had nothing to sedate the turtle, so the procedure was painful.  The video of this quickly went viral on YouTube, getting nearly 5 million views.  “For the turtle, the wound would have been fatal had we left the plastic inside its nostril,” reported one of the researchers.

This video, although disturbing, luckily saved this turtle’s life.  There are many plastic objects, like straws, that get lodged in sea animals, which ultimately kill them.  The team disinfected the hole where the straw had been, and were forced by law to release the turtle back into the wild.

The footage is graphic but is important to watch.  It illustrates well the potential life-threatening consequences of the tons of garbage that ends up in the sea. “We disinfected the air passageway with iodine and kept the turtle for observation before releasing him back into the wild,” the team reported on YouTube.

“The bleeding stopped pretty much immediately after the removal of the straw.”  The good news is that this turtle’s life was saved. The next time you think about littering remember this turtle and think twice. Help spread this lucky turtle’s story so others can understand.

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