How Much Plastic Kills a Sea Turtle?

The ocean is awash with plastic— more than 171 trillion pieces , scientists have estimated, and growing all the time. Animals get tangled in plastics or swallow them, the chemicals released by the stuff are often toxic, and once the plastic is inside a creature, it can stay inside of it, potentially blocking its airways or intestines.

A binding global treaty regulating the manufacturing and disposal of plastic could help change the situation. While the last round of negotiations on such a treaty ended inconclusively in August 2025 , that hasn’t stopped scientists from thinking about how it could work. A treaty will benefit from numbers, backed up by evidence, of how much plastic is lethal to sea life, and so a team of researchers publishing in the journal Proceedings of the Nationa