Short-finned pilot whales have a misleading name. They’re called whales, but are really a type of dolphin. They’re one of the many ocean creatures that call these islands home, and as a new study reports, a creature being targeted by Hawaiʻi’s ocean pollution problem.
Kristi West was the lead researcher from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa's Health and Stranding Lab. She and her team analyzed stranded short-finned pilot whales over the last decade. They found alarming amounts of fishing debris in some of the whales — as much as four to 12 pounds — who may have mistaken the floating trash for food.
"That is incredibly disturbing to observe in these free-swimming animals in the ocean," West said. "So that really led us to try to dig into the question of what type of marine debris are we seeing in pilot whales in Hawai’i, and what about other pilot whales in Hawai’i? And of course, that's to better understand where the source of this may be so that we can prevent this and better protect these animals."
Short-finned pilot whales, along with other dolphins and whales, are considered cetaceans. According to West, this makes them "recognized sentinels of our ocean health."
"They act like canaries in the coal mine, and they can give us early warning signals of things that are really not right in our marine ecosystems," she said. "I think we all recognize that marine debris is a really large global problem. We do see marine debris on our shorelines, we know it's out there in our oceans, but these animals provide us a a way to dig a little deeper into what kinds of problems it creates for them."
They study West led at the University of Hawai’i highlights the issue of marine debris in our oceans, focusing on abandoned, lost, or otherwise discarded fishing gear. This gear has been found in higher concentrations in Hawai’i than it has been in other locations in the world, West says.
West and her team found that 23% of the pilot whales they examined over a 13-year period had plastic in their stomachs.
"That's a higher incident rate of these findings in their stomachs than really anywhere else in the world for this species," she said. "It's showing us that this is a really significant threat to Hawaiian pilot whales when we compare the data to what's known about pilot whales across the globe."
She pointed out that there has not been the same level of incidence among other species of dolphins and whales in Hawai’i, suggesting that something about pilot whales — their diets, for example — makes them especially vulnerable to plastic pollution.
The whales in the study mainly ingested large pieces of plastic, about the size of an iPad or a shopping bag. One of them ingested over 35,000 pieces of plastic debris.
"That is not good for their long-term health and nutrition when we have that displacement, because that debris is not passing out of the stomach," West said. "It's there forever, basically."
This story aired on The Conversation on Sept. 8, 2026. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Annabelle Ink adapted this story for the web.
