A pregnant sperm whale found dead on a beach with 22 kilograms of plastic inside her has prompted a stark warning over the dangers of pollution in the Mediterranean Sea.
The 26-foot whale was found dead off Sardinia with a huge amount of plastic waste in her stomach, including a corrugated tube for electrical works, plastic plates, shopping bags, tangled fishing lines and a box of washing detergent with its bar code still legible.
The female whale beached off the northern coast of Sardinia last week, within the vast Pelagos marine sanctuary that was created as a haven for dolphins, whales and other sea life.
“It is the first time we have been confronted with an animal with such a huge quantity of garbage," Cinzia Centelegghe, a biologist with the University of Padova, told La Stampa.
The whale was also found carrying a foetus that had died. Experts said the mother whale had been unable to digest calamari due to the amount of plastic ingested, filling two-thirds of its stomach.
The World Wildlife Foundation said plastic is one of the greatest threats to marine life, killing at least five other whales that ingested large amounts of it over the last two years from Europe to Asia.
A spokesman for WWF said between 150,000 and 500,000 tonnes of plastic objects and 70,000 to 130,000 tonnes of micro-plastics wind up in Europe's seas each year.
To combat the phenomenon, the European Parliament last week approved a new law banning a wide range of single-use plastic products, including plates and straws, starting in 2021.
Italy's environment minister Sergio Costa lamented the whale's death and said he planned to propose a new law this week to limit the use of plastics.
The law will permit fishermen to bring plastics recovered at sea to land for proper disposal, which they currently are barred from doing.
Mr Costa also pledged Italy would be one of the first countries to enact the European single-use plastics ban and appealed to the mayors of Italian cities and coastal towns to adopt the ordinances in advance of the 2021 law.
"We have been using disposable plastics in a carefree way in these years, and now we are paying the price," he said. "The war on disposable plastics has started. And we won't stop here."
