An exasperating news story provides another unsettling image amid the raging pandemic — the death of another wonderful creation of God, due to man’s criminally foolish conduct.
A 4,000-kilo Bryde whale, an endangered species washed ashore in Mati City, Davao Oriental Saturday (May 1), died later on the same day.
Darrel Blatchley, owner and director of D’Bone Collector Museum, who went with personnel of the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources (BFAR) to Mati City to check on the ill-fated mammal, confirmed the Bryde whale died of plastic ingestion.
Every year, whales are among hundreds of thousands of sea creatures, including dolphins and porpoises which get entangled in nets and lines and “die a slow and painful death though suffocation, starvation, exhaustion.” Also, 100,000 marine creatures die from plastic entanglement, while “approximately 1 million sea birds also die from plastics.”
For the record, China and Indonesia, both neighbors of the Philippines, are the top sources of plastic bottles, bags and other rubbish clogging up our oceans. It is said that both populous nations “account for more than a third of plastic detritus in global waters,” according to a report in The Wall Street Journal last February 12, 2020.
We also have data about how much of the plastic waste that Filipinos throw away contributes to the pollution of our bodies of water that result in the killing of our marine creatures.
The Bryde whale in Mati City is just one of the sea creatures washed ashore in the coastlines of Davao and other parts of the country. If at all, this clearly indicates the growing culpability of Filipinos in polluting our waters.
The good news is that it is not impossible for us to stop this irresponsible behavior. We simply have to put an end to plastic pollution by turning a new leaf in life. We must stop the bad habit of throwing plastic wastes to our rivers, drainage, canals and other bodies of water. Aside from this, there is a city ordinance against the manufacture of almost all plastic products. We submit that this is a good beginning.
