S4E5: Entangled Sea Turtles

When it comes to talking about waste and its impacts on animals it is hard to not think about plastic. In this episode, Herre de Bondt tells us how sea turtles have been entangled with the politics of plastic.

Recorded: 27 November 2023. 

 Featured: 

• Dave the Diver
• Sea Turtle with straw in nostril

Credits:

• Claudia Hirtenfelder, executive producer and host 
• Herre de Bondt, co-host and co-editor
• Christiaan Mentz, sound editor and producer 
• Rebecca Shen, content producer and designer (logo and episode artwork)
• Gordon Clarke, bed music composer
• Learn more about the team here. 

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Transcript

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 00:00 – Introduction

• Season 4 of The Animal Highlight: Animals and Waste. 
• Co-host this season: Herre de Bondt has done research on rats in Amsterdam, crows in Tokyo, and gulls in The Hague. His work has now brought him to London where his PhD project is concerned with urban bird feeding practices. From hanging up fatballs for chirpy robins to tossing seed to flocks of ‘flying rats’, Herre is determined to investigate the inherently multispecies practice of bird feeding. He is particularly interested in the ways non-human animals inform and shape the contemporary city in collaboration with – and in defiance of – humans. You can connect with Herre via Twitter (@HerreBondt).
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•  We can’t talk about animals and waste without talking about plastic. So for this episode Herre wants to take a dive into the world of single-use plastic and turtles. 

 
01:16 – Dave the Diver

• First, I’d like to tell you about a video game. This might sound like a stretch, but trust me, it will make sense eventually. 
• I have recently been playing a video game called Dave the Diver. In this game you play as Dave, a somewhat clueless middle-aged man who becomes a diver in an idyllic tropical oceanic hole that is full of coral, fish, squid, and other wildlife. While diving, Dave encounters fantastical creatures such as mermaids and squid the size of freight ships, but he also engages with animals from real life, like the grey triggerfish and the porbeagle shark. The game even provides players with bits of information about the fish you encounter. For example, the game taught me that icefish are transparent due to the fact that they have no hemoglobin in their blood. 
• Despite its scientific accuracy, the politics of this game are a bit confusing. While some aspects of the game are premised on conservation and protecting vulnerable marine species the main purpose of the game is to kill marine life. 
• You see, Dave is a diver by day, but by night he runs a floating sushi restaurant near the diving hole. His head chef is dedicated to serving every fish that exists to his customers and to do so Dave needs to collect as many fish as he can, dead or alive. Dave the Diver’s objectives seem pretty clear: Kill and eat sea-life to broaden culinary culture and, above all else, make a profit. This seems to contradict conservation goals.  
• While playing the game I encountered fragments of a plastic bag. I followed them and came across a distressed leatherback turtle that Dave, without question, wanted to rescue. After wrestling with the erratic turtle for a bit, the animal coughed up a plastic bag. Dave then reflected on the impacts of discarding plastic in the ocean, saying “who would throw something like this into the sea?” as he parted ways with the turtle, his pockets full of dead sea-life. 

04:18 - Plastic and Olive Ridley Sea Turtles

• This digital fiction reminded me of a similar, and very real, case caught on film in 2015. You might already know what video I’m talking about since the original video has now received over 110 million views. 
• While studying the migratory patterns of the olive ridley sea turtle, Christine Figgener and her team caught a male turtle in Costa Rica. Upon closer inspection, they noticed something sticking out of the turtle’s nose. They initially thought it was a light brown, somewhat wrinkled, worm but it turned out to be a plastic straw! Most likely, the turtle had eaten the straw, realized they could not digest it, and regurgitated it which is when it lodged itself in their nasal cavity. Realizing that they were hours away from a vet, the team took it upon themselves to remove the straw using nothing but a pair of pliers. 
• They recorded everything. 
• The eight-minute video is hard-to-watch. 
• Over and over, the team grabs at the end of the straw and pulls it. The straw seems to be lodged impossibly tight in the turtle’s nose. The turtle closes his eyes and utters heartbreaking sounds of pain as streams of blood trickle from his mouth. Bit by bit, more and more of the straw becomes visible. One last yank and with a sneeze-like sound, the turtle breathes again. The camera focuses on the pliers holding the shriveled, brown straw that has become bent in line with the turtle’s nasal cavity. 
• Other plastic impacts olive ridley sea turtles in other ways: 
• Straws make up less than 1% of all plastic waste in the world’s oceans. By far the most problematic and prevalent plastic in the ocean is fishing gear. 46% of plastic waste in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch consists of fishing gear, and this is an enormous problem for olive ridley sea turtles. Crates, nets, traps, wires, and other fishing waste ends up drifting through the ocean, withstanding the elements’ attempts to break down the material until it traps an unsuspecting sea creature. 

07:27 - About Olive Ridley Sea Turtles

• Olive ridley sea turtles are born on beaches in massive breeding events called arribadas where they, together with tens of thousand other baby turtles, crawl out of their eggs and towards the sea. These arribadas tend to be mainly in Costa Rica and the coast of Odisha in India. Despite it being common for these beaches to have 11.5 million eggs per nesting season, many tiny turtles either do not hatch or are predated on shortly after hatching. 
• If they do make it through this challenging phase, grown olive ridley sea turtles feed on sea urchins, crabs, jellyfish, and other relatively easy targets for these olive-coloured reptiles. They can live to be between 30 and 50 years old, but they can only achieve this if they successfully avoid the challenges that the fishery industry has laid out for them. 
• You see, when these turtles reach maturity they live a solitary life. They spend most of their time in either reefs or open ocean, hunting by themselves until it’s breeding season for which they can migrate hundreds of kilometres. But this solitary, open sea lifestyle also comes with risk. Over the span of 18 years, 1.5 million olive ridley sea turtles have died as bycatch. Even if they avoid this, fishing ships tend to toss their gear overboard which may cause turtles to get stuck, choke, or drown. It destroys their habitat. 

09:25 – Charismatic Species and Objects

• And yet, people consider plastic straws, not fishing gear, to be turtles’ biggest enemy. After the video of the turtle with the straw in its nose, various global chains, such as Starbucks and McDonalds, pledged to stop using plastic straws immediately. There may be different reasons for companies to shift to paper straws. Maybe giving up plastic straws was simply an easy and cheap change to make. I mean, Christine Figgener, the person who found the turtle in the video, describes straws as a “gateway drug for conservation” as it gives people and companies a small task that might ease them into bigger changes. 
• A more negative – yet realistic – take is that swapping out plastic straws is a form of greenwashing. Companies want to be regarded as environmentally friendly, and swapping plastic straws for paper straws offers a cheap and easy way to boost their image. However, I think a large part of why this video proved to be so effective is because it was a turtle who was captured on film. 
• The olive ridley sea turtle in the video, just like the leatherback turtle in Dave the Diver, have a certain charisma  which evokes sympathy and has the potential to lead to action.  
• In a 2007 article, Jamie Lorimer argues that nonhuman charisma provides, and I quote: “the vital motivating energy that compels many people to get involved in biodiversity conservation." 
• Turtles have charisma, and charisma activates people. 
• This one video led to a worldwide debate on plastic straws which tells us one thing: Stories clearly matter. But in a way this is also saddening. Because what of the millions of animals who perish off-camera? What about the turtles, the fish, the birds, all the other animals that die due to the countless forms of waste that are life-threatening and risky to animals? 
• Even though the olive ridley sea turtle in the video didn’t die, his suffering sparked worldwide outrage and action while plastic-wrapped single-use products continue to cause suffering and death of millions of other animals every year. I can’t believe I’m quoting Joseph Stalin – although it is not entirely clear whether he first coined this expression – but the quote goes "a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic." This sentiment is clear in the different responses to plastic that impacts turtles. That single turtle and his charisma disrupted the statistic and made it personal. 
• And maybe that’s just what we need. 
• Maybe we need more charismatic ambassador animals pushing stories and humans collecting those stories. Whether we tell these stories on YouTube, in video games, in news articles, or, dare I say in podcasts, stories clearly matter. 

12:37 – The Politics of Plastic 

• People don’t use straws to save fish, while eating fish from an industry that is most responsible for putting plastic in the oceans. 
• Change is possible and can happen quickly when people are motivated. 
• Plastic straws make up less than 1% of plastic found in the oceans, more than half is from the fishing industry. 
• Plastic straws help us to feel in control, it feels more tangible and direct in terms of action. Plastic in the fishing industry feels abstract. 
• Imagine seeing a pile of fishing nests next to your dinner table. 
• Maybe we need to talk about charismatic objects! 

16:08 – Credits

• The Animal Highlight is produced and hosted by Claudia Hirtenfelder. This season was co-hosted with Herre de Bondt. The editing was done by Claudia Hirtenfelder, Herre de Bondt, and Christiaan Mentz. The episode artwork was done by Rebecca Shen and the best music by Gordon Clarke.