Plastic-choked waterways putting Australian marine life at risk

With Australians using 10 million plastic bags every day, waterway pollution has begun to take a toll on the country’s native marine life.

Chief among them is the green turtle, with only one in a thousand hatchlings surviving into adolescence, with many fatally mistaking plastic for jellyfish.

One such turtle, three-week-old hatchling “Andrew”, was found in poor health after swallowing a piece of plastic near a NSW Central Coast beach.

He was rescued by Taronga Zoo staff, who performed a painstaking operation to bring the young turtle back to health.

The rehabilitated turtle has since been released into Sydney Harbour, to begin his journey back out into the wild.

The zoo intends to monitor Andrew’s welfare via a remote transmitter for the next nine months.

Happy though the outcome of Andrew’s story might be, Taronga Zoo representatives nevertheless are concerned about the substantial amounts of plastic being found in the intestines of marine turtles.

“[For] that small a little hatchling [to be] already consuming plastics out in the ocean – that was a big surprise,” Taronga zoo vet Kimberly Vinette Herrin told 9NEWS.