"We were able to restore dignity to a marine being who probably died from the ingestion of 22 kg of plastic with a 2-meter fetus in his womb".
These are the words of the director of the La Maddalena national park, Giulio Plastina , pronounced just before the ribbon cutting that inaugurated the exhibition of the sperm whale skeleton in the Environmental Documentation Center of Caprera .
8 meters long, weighing 201 kg (only the head weighs 69), it was found beached in 2019 in Cala Romantica (Arzachena).
It is the only skeleton of a sperm whale present in Sardinia and in all of Italy there are only a dozen of them. It was not possible to recover the puppy, never born as it was not yet sufficiently formed as a skeleton.
The plastic that the experts of the University of Padua found inside the stomach, which will be placed inside the skeleton , is provisionally contained in two showcases. Sperm whales live at no less than 7/800 meters and in those depths they feed, above all on squid and the like. This dramatically suggests how much plastic can be deposited in the depths of the sea.
The first tests on the skeleton, in 2019, were carried out by the Seame Sardinia association and it will be the same association chaired by Luca Bittau that will organize the guided tours inside the Caprera exhibition space.
