Microplastics are not food, and yet tiny turtles wash up each year with little tummies loaded with microplastics. The TOA Foundation has come up with a clever way to show children just how much plastic is in our ocean.
Cape Town, South Africa (30 March 2026) – April marks the start of turtle hatchling season. Every year, tiny little turtles start their journey into the big, wide ocean, ready to face the odds and grow into a beautiful, ancient creature. But the weather, the environment and the pollution can often stop this process in its tracks.
The Two Oceans Aquarium (TOA) Foundation’s Turtle Rescue Network collect any hatchlings known as strandings and takes them into the care of the capable team of specialist volunteers and aquarium staff.
So many of these hatchlings wash up on the Western Cape coastlines because when they are born on the Northern Beaches in KwaZulu-Natal, they make their way into the ocean and towards the warm Agulhas current.
If a hatchling is lucky, it will be carried by the Agulhas Current as it turns east off the coast of the Western Cape and out into the warm Indian Ocean. Unfortunately, this isn’t easy for the tiny hatchlings, and many of them are ejected from the Agulhas Current into the cold water of the Atlantic. This water is too cold for these hatchlings to survive. They get gradually weaker and weaker as they try to return to the Agulhas – an effort that is made increasingly difficult in bad weather, barnacles taking over the little body or if the turtle has been harmed by ingesting plastic pollution.
Microplastics, which are prevalent in the ocean, are often mistaken for kelp and other delicious morsels. The more plastic ingested, the sicker the hatchling becomes. It prevents them from digesting real food, making them weak and leading to stranding.
To marry the idea that microplastics make turtle hatchlings sick, the team came up with a clever educational tool which helps learners understand just how detrimental plastic pollution is.
The team have tiny turtles (modelled on the very real ones they have rescued), and accompanying these turtles is a little plastic container filled with all the microplastics ingested by that turtle. The exercise gives learners a hands-on experience, seeing how such a tiny turtle can have so much microplastic in its system.
The picture changes when one can hold the evidence within their hands. The Two Oceans Aquarium (TOA) Foundation is committed to education. The team host multiple programmes to empower and educate youth.
Take a look at the simple, yet powerful way learners get hands-on.
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