A whale that washed ashore in Hawaii over the week­end like­ly died in part be­cause it ate large vol­umes of fish­ing traps, fish­ing nets, plas­tic bags and oth­er ma­rine de­bris, sci­en­tists said Thurs­day, high­light­ing the threat to wildlife from the mil­lions of tons of plas­tic that ends up in oceans every year.

The body of the 56-foot (17-me­ter) long, 120,000-pound (54,431-kilo­gram) an­i­mal was first no­ticed on a reef off Kauai on Fri­day. High tide brought it ashore on Sat­ur­day.

Kristi West, the di­rec­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii’s Health and Strand­ing Lab, said there were enough for­eign ob­jects in the open­ing of the whale’s in­testi­nal tract to block food.

“The pres­ence of undi­gest­ed fish and squid lends fur­ther ev­i­dence of a block­age,” she said in a news re­lease from the Hawaii De­part­ment of Land and Nat­ur­al Re­sources.

The whale’s stom­ach con­tained six hag­fish traps, sev­en types of fish­ing net, two types of plas­tic bags, a light pro­tec­tor, fish­ing line and a float from a net. Re­searchers al­so found squid beaks, fish skele­ton and re­mains of oth­er prey in the whale’s stom­ach.

It’s the first known case of a sperm whale in Hawaii wa­ters in­gest­ing dis­card­ed fish­ing gear, West said.

The whale’s stom­ach was so large West’s team wasn’t able to ex­am­ine it com­plete­ly. They sus­pect there was more ma­te­r­i­al they weren’t able to re­cov­er.

Re­searchers found noth­ing wrong with oth­er or­gans they ex­am­ined. They col­lect­ed sam­ples to screen for dis­ease and con­duct oth­er fol­low-up tests.

Sperm whales trav­el across thou­sands of miles in the ocean so it’s not clear where the de­bris came from.

Sci­en­tists say that more than 35 mil­lion tons (31.9 mil­lion met­ric tons) of plas­tic pol­lu­tion is pro­duced around Earth each year and about a quar­ter of that ends up around the wa­ter.

Ma­rine de­bris harms nu­mer­ous species.

Seabirds can in­gest as much as 8% of their body weight in plas­tic. En­dan­gered Hawai­ian monk seals and green sea tur­tles can get caught in plas­tic nets and die. Sharks and oth­er apex preda­tors eat small­er fish that feed on mi­croplas­tic, which can then en­dan­ger their own health.

In ad­di­tion to eat­ing plas­tics, large whales are harmed when they be­come en­tan­gled in fish­ing gear or oth­er ropes in the ocean. The drag from de­bris can force whales to use more en­er­gy to swim and make it hard­er for them to eat, caus­ing star­va­tion.