Researchers from the United Kingdom and Australia have found that small juvenile marine turtles from several species are ingesting large quantities of plastic, a form of pollution that affects more than just turtles. The scientists studied 121 juvenile turtles, including green turtles, loggerhead turtles, flatback turtles, olive ridley turtles, and hawksbill turtles. The specimens, which were either stranded or bycaught (the portion of a commercial catch that is not caught intentionally), came from either the Indian Ocean near Western Australia or the Pacific Ocean near Queensland, Australia. “It is difficult to study this [life] stage as most species [develop] in open ocean areas and are hard to sample,” said Emily Duncan, a researcher at the University of Exeter and lead author of the paper. She and her colleagues found plastic in the gastrointestinal tracts of many turtles, though with significant variation across species and oceans. Green turtles from the Pacific …