A man who caught a fish which had grown with a plastic Powerade wrapper around it has urged people to ‘pick up their garbage’.
Adam Turnbull had been fishing in the Saskatchewan River in Alberta, Canada, when he found a fish growing around a plastic ring and took a photo to show the devastation littering has on river life.
The fisherman posted four images on Facebook along with a message telling people to pick up their litter and it has since been shared more than 11.5k times.
The 28-year-old wrote:
Pick up your garbage. This is a Powerade wrapper which takes up no room in your pocket until you get to a garbage can. Please share! Never thought this post would hit 10k shares.
Thanks to everyone who has had a look at this post as it was meant to raise awareness and that it has.
Speaking to UNILAD, Adam said he wanted to share the pictures to raise awareness of just how damaging even a small piece of litter can be on the environment.
He said:
I was fishing in the South Saskatchewan River when I hooked into this fish as I’ve done many times before.
It fought on the way in, although when I finally put my eyes on the fish I could tell something was definitely wrong.
I originally thought the fish had been attacked by another fish as I could see the large wound. Once I picked the fish out of the water I noticed the sports drink wrapper around its body.
I quickly grabbed a small pair of scissors and carefully removed the plastic.
After a quick photo Adam released the fish which ‘shot off like a rocket’.
He told UNILAD he hopes to see the fish again one day, adding:
I hope to catch it again someday as I have strong hopes it will thrive now that the obstruction has been removed.
I just really want people to realise something as small as a drink label which takes up no space in your pocket can have devastating affect on our outdoors and wildlife.
It’s not just rivers affected by ignorant litterers, it’s damaging sea life as well.
David Attenborough recently opened up on the dangers of plastic after witnessing the damage it causes to the environment while filming Blue Planet II.
The broadcaster and naturalist said action on plastics should be ‘taken immediately’ and that humanity ‘held the future of the planet in the palm of its hands’, writes the Guardian.
He said:
We’ve seen albatrosses come back with their belly full of food for their young and nothing in it. The albatross parent has been away for three weeks gathering stuff for her young and what comes out?
What does she give her chick? You think it’s going to be squid, but it’s plastic. The chick is going to starve and die.
A Guardian investigation established that globally, people buy a million plastic bottles every minute and around the world, ‘more than 8m tonnes of plastic leaks into the oceans’.
They also found plastic production is set to ‘double in the next 20 years and quadruple by 2050’.
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Two Australian surfers, Pete Ceglinski and Andrew Turton, have spent years developing their solution to cleaner seas and oceans, and earlier in October, Portsmouth harbour became the first in Britain to install one of their Seabins.
Plastic bottles, bags, cigarette butts and all manner of other rubbish will be sucked out of the sea by the floating bin.
The amazing piece of environmentally-friendly tech has the capacity to hold up to 1.5kg of junk and sea pollutants a day, with a full capacity of 12kg and the ability to collect the equivalent of 20,000 bottles or 83,000 bags every year.
The Seabin is able to collect floating debris, as small as 2mm, which gathers on the surface of waters in harbours and ports, and can suck in oil to protect the marine life that lives on our coast.
It works by creating a flow of water passing into the bin and bringing with it, all the floating rubbish and debris, which is then caught in the bag and the clean water redistributed into the marina.
Andrew and Pete said:
We are excited to introduce our new invention helping to solve, educate and prevent our oceans pollution problems. The Seabin is a revolution in ocean cleaning technology – it will help create cleaner oceans with healthier marine life.
The Seabin project is helping create a better way of life for everyone and every living thing – the marinas, ports and yacht clubs are the perfect place to start helping clean our oceans.
There are no huge open ocean swells or storms inside the marinas, it’s a relatively controlled environment.
No excuses for dropping litter – pick it up!
