To their peril.Because when the fish goes to look for some prey. when people they come for the enjoyment on the beach, for the barbecue, the picnic," he says, pointing to large piles of collected rubbish, divided into categories, with a special heap for shoe soles.For six days now, no plastic has been spotted in the turtle&PET injection molding machine39;s stool, Changawa says with tangible relief.Once they reach this point, few can be saved.

At a turtle "clinic", van de Geer and his team tube-feed laxatives to the turtles in hopes that the intestinal plug can be loosened. die. More (often) than not, the animal will.On current trends, he warned, "by 2050 there will be more plastic in the seas than fish."Some plastic is brought from the sea.The problem is a global one, affecting all the oceans and hundreds of animal and plant species."It takes a while but eventually after a lot of pain, and I mean it's a reptile so it can't express pain like a mammal can in its face, but you can see that it's just closing its eyes and its all sort of tensed up and all of a sudden 'poof', it all comes out," he told AFP.Turtles confuse these items, bobbing and fluttering about in the ocean currents, for jellyfish or other prey.A shopping bag is estimated to degrade over hundreds of years, and harder plastics could be around for millennia before they are broken down and absorbed in the environment. Some others is from.Plastic is cheap, versatile and nigh-indestructible. when it finds something like this..As its human handlers step aside, Kenzo struggles out of the harness, pushes hard with its flippers on the sand, and slides into small waves specked with bits of plastic trash."In Watamu, the locals do what they can.."Plastic ocean pollution is a key item on the menu for ministers from over 100 countries gathering in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi for a three-day UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) starting Monday.With a final gulp of air, the hawksbill turtle executes a perfect butterfly stroke and disappears into deeper water -- a rare lucky escape for one of Kenya's sea turtles, increasingly under siege from humanity's plastic binge."It has fully recovered, when you take it out (of the recovery tank) it is flapping, it is fighting," he said.Kai was brought in emaciated, and unable to stay underwater.According to environmental group WWF, 8.- 'A very successful story' -In July, US researchers said more than 9.."It's a very successful story, we are hoping to release it if not today, in the next two days or so.But "sometimes they can't.

And by now it is pretty much everywhere.1 billion tonnes of plastic had been produced to date, most of it dumped into landfills and the oceans.Fisherman-turned-environmentalist Kahindi Changawa, 40, looks with a smile over the tank for Kai, a green turtle which has been recovering from plastic ingestion at the Watamu rehabilitation centre for nearly a month."Or they are in such pain that they recognise that they have to stop eating and they basically starve," he told AFP at Watamu's Blue Lagoon as he repeatedly bent down to pick up one piece of beach litter after the other. but they're still hungry so they keep eating and it compounds, compounds, compounds and they explode on the inside," said Casper van de Geer, manager of Local Ocean Conservation, which runs the Watamu turtle rescue."Elsewhere in town, a project called Regeneration Africa melts and treats the plastic gathered by volunteers such as Iddi, and moulds it into paving stones and other materials to sell for funds to continue the anti-plastic drive.

Pixabay) Gently, Kenzo the sea turtle is lowered onto a beach where a scattering of bottle caps, candy wrappers, yoghurt cups and discarded flipflops scar an otherwise idyllic setting."It causes a blockage..Most common are bottle tops, but there are also cigarette lighters, toothbrushes, food containers, different lengths of string, drinks bottles and of course, the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag."Sometimes I find (plastic) in the stomachs" of the fish he catches.- 'Sometimes they can't' -Many turtles are found floating, barely alive, having eaten so much plastic that they become buoyant and can no longer dive into the depths where they live and feed.Green turtles were once a delicacy in Kenya, but may no longer be eaten under laws to protect the endangered species from extinction.. Dozens of the endangered creatures need # rescuing every year around Watamu, where plastic litter accumulates in Indian Ocean.Turtles confuse these items, bobbing and fluttering about in the ocean currents, for jellyfish or other prey..Dozens of the endangered creatures need rescuing every year around the coastal town of Watamu, where plastic litter accumulates in the Indian Ocean and the beach from as far afield as Indonesia, Madagascar and Yemen, according to the product labels."Many others will not be so lucky.Ahead of the UNEA meeting to tackle the scourge of pollution, UN Environment Programme head Erik Solheim urged action to stop the oceans becoming a "plastic soup

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