Moment turtle chokes on plastic off Hawaii coast revives memories of 2015 video ... trends now
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The heartbreaking moment a turtle choked on a piece of plastic was captured by divers off the coast of Hawaii, highlighting the scale of pollution in our oceans.
A group of 100 individuals strapped with scuba gear spent Earth Day clearing pollution off the seafloor in Oahu and watched in horror as the sea animal mistook the waste for a jellyfish.
The video shows the green sea turtle swimming toward the divers, opening its mouth and coughing up a thin sheet of plastic - along with plastic bottles, cans and other trash littering the ocean floor.
The distressing footage mirrored an incident in 2015 when researchers discovered a one-inch plastic straw lodged in a turtles nose in Costa Rican waters, which sparked a movement to ban the waste.
The video shows the green sea turtle swimming toward the divers, opening its mouth and coughing up a thin sheet of plastic - along with plastic bottles, cans and other trash littering the ocean floor
Diver Brittany Ziegler (pictured), 34, who shot the video, said: 'We were on Oahu for a weekend pledge against plastics so it was ironic that we captured that awful footage of the turtle on that day
A group of 100 individuals strapped with scuba gear spent Earth Day clearing pollution off
