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The 100-foot-long whale dived and circled in the murky, dark waters of the Santa Barbara Channel, looking for a cloud of krill to scoop and catch inside her 20-foot-long jaws.
As the blue whale began to resurface, whale scientist Brandon Southall was in a boat nearby, and he could feel his throat go dry. The whale was coming up right beneath a 200,000-ton transoceanic cargo ship, named the Maladarko, that was heading east from Hong Kong to its destination in Long Beach Harbor.
“We were plotting the two paths,” said Southall, a researcher at UC Santa Cruz and the president of an Aptos-based marine biology research firm. “It was a straight collision course.”
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Published 1 month ago:
February 23, 2021 at 2:00 pm
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Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP via Getty Images
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Trillions of barely visible pieces of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans, from surface waters to the deep seas. These particles, known as microplastics, typically form when larger plastic objects such as shopping bags and food containers break down.