Baleen whales ingest an estimated 10m pieces of microplastics each day, study says

California scientists surprised at amount of human-made pollutant whales consume in addition to usual diet of fish and krill

Microplastics have infiltrated nearly all our environments - from human lungs to the Antarctic. Now, scientists have estimated that whales are consuming millions of microplastics per day, in a study that deepens our understanding of plastic pollution in oceans and animal bodies.

Scientists from a group of institutions around California used 191 suction-cup tags to follow whales - blue, fin and humpback - along the California coastline to quantify how much plastic they were swallowing, and where it was coming from. They determined the vast majority of plastics are consumed through whales eating krill and other food, instead of coming from water filtered into their mouths. A krill-eating blue whale may ingest 10m pieces of microplastics each day, they estimated, while fish-eating whales probably eat 200,000 pieces of plastic each day.