Tragic sight as pipefish 'tries to communicate' with plastic straw

Tragic sight as a diver captured the moment a pipefish tried to communicate with a plastic straw off the coast of Ambon, the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of Maluku.

Claudia, the filmer, told Newsflare: "Ambon in Indonesia is famous for 'muck diving' - diving over sand, looking for small and strange critters.

"Diving there was really interesting, but also quite depressing because of the huge amount of plastic trash we encountered underwater, on every single dive. We have never seen a place more polluted. Tyres, empty containers, batteries, and discarded fishing equipment were spread all over the ocean floor, swarms of plastic bags were floating by in midwater and even a TV swam past on the surface once. All over the place, marine life was living in and around rubbish – the patches of the reef as well as the sandy areas were eerily colorless and looked unhealthy."

She continued: "My partner and diving buddy Hendrik spotted this fairly large white pipefish with a plastic straw next to it. The pipefish was moving close to the straw and seemed to be checking it out. Both had the same color and even the same kind of algae growth on them.

"If the pipefish believed it found a member of its own species or realized that the object was lifeless trash coming from the human world above is probably up to marine biologists’ interpretation. Many pipefish species mate for life, and we actually saw quite a lot of them on our dives. I believe it is not completely unlikely."

According to a study, Indonesia is believed to be the world's second-largest contributor of plastic pollution in the oceans, after China.