A dead gray whale washed ashore on West Seattle's Arroyo Beach last week. In itself, that is not an inherently unusual occurrence: five to ten gray whales die annually in Puget Sound waters, unable to complete the lengthy migration from the lagoons of Baja California, where they breed, to their summer feeding waters north of Alaska. Indeed, that whale was the fourth discovered in the region in a little over a week.
(If you're looking for a good gross-out, this slideshow contains images of those stomach contents).
However, the trash was likely not to blame for the whale's death, despite its extent:
Unfortunately, there is little reason to believe that gray whales will be any less likely to ingest such pollutants in future.
A recent study in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin found the average density of marine debris along seafloor habitats off the California coast to be "significantly higher" than the 1990s. The list of debris detected by the study's authors is not dissimilar to that found in the dead whale's stomach: monofilament fishing lines, longlines, fishing nets and traps, cables, beverage cans and bottles, tires, hub caps, and even outboard motors and 55 gallon drums.
The study's authors note that plastic "was the most abundant material and will likely persist for centuries."
Nor is debris along the seabed the only plastic peril facing gray whales – and other marine wildlife – along their migration route. The authors of another study in the same journal retrieved and examined 870 lost or abandoned gillnets in Puget Sound and environs, and found the nets had ensnared almost 32,000 marine invertebrates, over 1,000 fish, more than 500 seabirds and 23 marine mammals. They wrote: