Another crippling evidence of the plastic menace choking our marine life has emerged after a beached whale was found dead along the coast of the Philippines. The 1,100 pounds, 15-foot long juvenile male Cuvier's beaked whale was found washed up over the weekends and is thought to have died a few hours after being discovered. When marine biologists performed a necropsy, they found 88 pounds of plastic in his body.

Photograph by Mary Gay Blatchley, D'BONE COLLECTOR MUSEUM

The D’ Bone Collector Museum of natural history located in Davao City, Philippines received a notification of a whale stuck along the shores of Sitio Asinan Barangay Cadunan, Mabini Campostella valley. Five hours after receiving the information, the whale passed away. A team of researchers from the museum was dispatched with an objective of rescuing the whale and bringing it back to Davao.

"Doing this is not just for our gain but mainly to give education and for people to realize how magnificent these animals are," read a post on the D' Bone Collector Museum Facebook page.

Researchers, later on, performed a necropsy of the whale and discovered 40 kilograms of plastic bags in his stomach.  Among the plastic substance included 16 rice sacks, four banana plantation bags, an assortment of plastic shopping bags and other plastic items that will be later shared by the D’ Bone collector museum.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

"This whale had the most plastic we have ever seen in a whale. It's disgusting," the museum wrote on Facebook, adding that the necropsy team determined the plastic to be the whale's cause of death. "Action must be taken by the government against those who continue to treat the waterways and ocean as dumpsters."

Marine scientists explain that marine animals can easily mistake plastic bags for food. When whales eat plastic, their bodies are tricked into thinking they have full stomachs, when in actuality, there is no nutritional benefit derived. Whales are unable to digest plastic, so as their stomach fill up, their bodies get sick, lose weight and lack the energy to forage or hunt for food.

Photograph by Thomas P. Peschak, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION

At some point, their stomach fills up with trash and they can’t eat real food,” said Regina Asmutis-Silvia, the executive director of Whale and Dolphin Conservation:

“You’re not getting any nutrients in and you’ve basically completely clogged your digestive system.”

D’Bone Collector Museum's owner Darrell Blatchley attended the whale's necropsy said, “The plastic in some areas was so compact it was almost becoming calcified, almost like a solid brick,”

“It had been there for so long it had started to compact,” he said, adding that it was the worst plastic pollution he'd ever seen in an animal's body.

This story is a constant reminder of the consequences of human activity on animals, the ecosystem and the whole planet.