Wednesday, 16 December, 2020 - 13:15
Two dromedary camels forage on trash that litters the desert surrounding Dubai. A new study suggests that plastic kills 1 percent of camels in the United Arab Emirates. | Photo: ULRICH WERNERY
Dubai- Asher Jones
Marcus Eriksen was studying plastic pollution in the Arabian Gulf when he met camel expert Ulrich Wernery. “[Ulrich] said, ‘You want to see plastic? Come with me.’ So we went deep into the desert,” Eriksen recalls. Before long, they spotted a camel skeleton and began to dig through sand and bones.
“We unearthed this mass of plastic, and I was just appalled. I couldn’t believe that — almost did not believe that — a mass as big as a medium-sized suitcase, all plastic bags, could be inside the rib cage of this [camel] carcass,” says Eriksen, an environmental scientist at the 5 Gyres Institute, a plastic pollution research and education organization in Santa Monica, Calif.