Sea Turtle Agonising In Pain As Straw Is Extracted From Its Nostril Is Too Hard To Watch
At first, they thought it was a parasitic worm, researchers soon realised the object stuck in this sea turtle's nostril was actually a plastic straw.
By John Lim — 18 Aug 2015, 05:52 PM
Posted on 10 August, the 8-minute long video shows a group of researchers in Costa Rice, extracting a 12cm long straw from the nostril of a 35kg Olive Ridley sea turtle
A video showing the long, painful removal of a straw from the bleeding nostril of a sea turtle has been posted online to highlight the environmental danger posed by plastic litter.
Christine Figgener, a sea turtle expert and her colleagues were collecting data for a study when they noticed something amiss - an object was stuck inside the sea turtle's left nostril
Figgener and colleagues were collecting data on sea turtle mating when they noticed something in the nose of a 77-pound (35-kilogram) male. After team members extracted a couple of centimeters of the object with pliers and snipped off a sample, they discovered that the wrinkled, brownish object was a plastic drinking straw.
Originally, the researchers thought the object was a parasitic worm. Little did they know it was actually a 12cm long straw. Using a Swiss knife plier, the straw was slowly removed.
The team felt it was better to remove the straw immediately, since they were hours away from a veterinarian—and there was no guarantee the vet would know how to deal with a sea turtle.
Although the procedure was bloody and painful, the sea turtle reportedly felt much better after the removal
'The team felt it was better to remove the straw immediately, since they were hours away from a veterinarian—and there was no guarantee the vet would know how to deal with a sea turtle. We disinfected the air passageway with iodine and kept the turtle for observation before releasing him back into the wild. The bleeding stopped pretty much immediately after the removal of the straw,' the Youtube description says
According to Figgener, the sea turtle might have accidentally eaten the straw
Figgener's not sure how the straw ended up in the male's nose, but the sea turtle expert thinks it could have swallowed the straw at some point, gagged on it, and then tried to throw it back up. "Olive ridleys feed on crustaceans, especially on the seabed," Figgener says, so the turtle might have slurped up the straw along with its meal.