Not many images make me emotional, but this one does: a deformed sea turtle that has had a plastic band around its body since infancy.

Researchers have also found humpback whales trailing huge nets, cutting into their flesh and making hunting impossible, and dead sea animals washed ashore carrying as much as 1,000 pieces of plastic in their guts.

Below is the the skeleton of an albatross chick, found near the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” a swirling mass of garbage in the North Pacific Ocean.  The bird was fed plastic by its parents and starved or choked to death.