Save The Plastic Bag

TRICK PHOTOGRAPHY

Anti-plastic bag activists show the same five photographs over and over again in support of their claim that plastic bags kill huge numbers of marine mammals and seabirds. An unsuspecting public assumes that they are examples of thousands or millions of similar incidents. The public is being misled.

A London Times article has exposed as a myth the claim that large numbers of marine mammals and seabirds are dying from ingesting plastic bags.

THE FAMOUS TURTLE PICTURE

This photograph of a turtle eating a plastic bag is published thousands of times on the Internet. This particular turtle is the poster child of the anti-plastic bag movement.

We don't know where the photograph came from. We can't tell if the turtle is eating a plastic bag or something else. We can't even tell whether the photograph is authentic.

We have been unable to find another photograph of a turtle eating a plastic bag anywhere on the Internet. To check for yourself, search for "turtle plastic bag" on Google Images.

Encore performances

MARINE MAMMALS

Anti-plastic bag activists show a photograph of a sea lion eating a plastic bag.

They also use a photograph of the contents of the stomach of a whale, including one or more plastic bags.

We cannot find another photograph showing that a whale or other marine mammal ate a plastic bag.

SEABIRDS

We have not seen any photographs of birds eating plastic bags.

Anti-plastic bag activists use photographs of two birds that may have been entangled in a plastic bag. Click here and here for the photographs. We can’t tell whether the bird in the first photograph is entangled in a bag or not.

MISSING EVIDENCE

Plastic grocery bags were introduced thirty years ago. If plastic bags are such a huge problem for marine mammals and seabirds as the anti-plastic bag activists maintain, then there would be thousands of photographs by now.

The City of Manhattan Beach, California has been perpetuating the myth about marine mammals and seabirds. At a public hearing on plastic bags in the City Council on July 1, 2008, SaveThePlasticBag.com pointed out that there is no evidence of a major problem and that the photo of the turtle with the blue plastic film or bag in its mouth was being published over and over again.

Following the hearing, Heal the Bay backtracked and restated its position according to a published media report. The report states:

The president of Heal the Bay, Mark Gold, rebutted [SaveThePlasticBag.com's] argument that plastic bags do not kill a large number of marine life, pointing out that the bags break down in the ocean through photodegradation and wave and wind activity.

“The bags are all broken into smaller bits and mix together in a sort of soup,” explained Sarah Abramson, the coastal resources director of Heal the Bay. “When we conduct an autopsy on an animal, it’s difficult to figure out what plastic killed it, but going off of the statistics we have from the amount of high amount of plastic bags found during beach clean-ups and the large number that wind up in catch basins, it’s fair to say a good percentage of the plastic debris marine life are consuming is from plastic bags.”

In other words, they are making a huge assumption. They don't have the evidence. As we can see from the London Times article, the hype about marine mammals and seabirds is not a basis for banning plastic bags.

PLASTIC BAGS CANNOT BE DIGESTED

If a marine mammal or bird does eat a plastic bag or plastic material, it will not remain in the gastrointestinal tract forever. Polyethylene is nonpoisonous and indigestible by birds and monogastric animals including sea mammals. Plastic film is flexible and will pass through the digestive system without injuring the tissue of the digestive tract. All such materials will be expelled out of the body either from the end of the digestive tract or the mouth.

When a human being dies due to unknown reasons, a doctor will autopsy the body to determine the cause of death. When an animal, mammal or bird dies due to unknown reasons, its body should be autopsied by a veterinarian in order to find the cause of death, not by a biased environmentalist. The veterinarian searches for the truth. Environmentalists make assumptions and see what they want to see.

BAN FISHING?

Click here for a study entitled: “Estimates of marine mammal, sea turtle, and seabird mortality in the California drift gillnet fishery for swordfish and thresher shark, 1996-2002.” Large numbers of turtles, marine mammals, and seabirds are killed by fishing activities.

If we really want to save these creatures, then we would need to ban fishing.