Plastic bags, fishing line, netting, and packaging cause entanglement injuries and death in millions of marine and coastal animals each year. Reducing marine debris is a direct animal welfare priority.
Marine debris entanglement causes some of the most protracted suffering documented in wild animals. A seal or whale entangled in fishing gear may struggle for days, weeks, or months before dying from exhaustion, infection from constricting wounds, or starvation from inability to hunt. Ghost nets trap fish, sea turtles, dolphins, and seabirds that enter them in search of prey, creating long-term wildlife death traps. Plastic rings from packaging constrict growth in seabirds and marine mammals over years. The welfare case for marine plastic reduction is therefore immediate and direct. Ghost gear retrieval programmes, fishing industry gear marking and tracking, and consumer plastic reduction all contribute to reducing entanglement risk for marine wildlife.