Its eyes set on a floating object in the water, the hawksbill turtle swims happily toward what looks to it like a jellyfish. Too late. The object it snaps and swallows isn’t a jellyfish, its favorite meal, but a piece of plastic. In an instant, the hawksbill is dead, following in the footsteps of three others which died earlier in the past two weeks.

An increasing number of hawksbills are dying of rubbish in the waters of the Thousand Islands,