Shocking photos show sea creatures ‘making homes’ out of decades old dumped litter

Shocking pictures show sea creatures are “making homes” out of “decades old” litter that has been dumped in waters, including a lobster living in a traffic cone and sea anemones growing on a can of Irn Bru.

The photos were captured by 31-year-old Chemistry teacher Ross McLaren who began diving around the sea lochs in Scotland in 2016.

He started to document the litter he witnessed whilst diving and said the sport is quite depressing due to the quantity of rubbish which he says has sky-rocketed since lockdown.

He said there has been a “general increase in the amount of litter in water” and “people don’t realise what an impact it is having.”

McLaren, from Kilwinning, Ayrshire, added that it is “disheartening” to see the number of marine animals living amongst rubbish, some of which is “decades old” including “a Nintendo controller and cans of Tennent’s’ with the pin-up girls on them.”

While diving near Fairlie Quay, Largs in North Ayrshire earlier this month he found a lobster hiding in a traffic cone.

He said: “I was really quite surprised to see it - the visibility is sometimes not the best and it wasn’t the easiest shot to get. The marine life do use litter as habitat.

"On this occasion I thought it best to leave it as it looked like the lobster had set up its home in there.”

Back in 2019, McLaren pictured a distressing image showing a lobster with plastic tied around its claws suggesting it had been caught and thrown back into the water.

He has also seen marine life making homes in a can of Irn Bru and “a bottle which looks like Budweiser or Buckfast” which “shocked a lot of people”.

When diving in Greenock he thought he had spotted a huge jellyfish which instead turned out to be a Bag For Life.

He said: "You can understand why a whale or a porpoise thinks a plastic bag is a jellyfish. I was totally oblivious as well. It’s really quite disheartening.”

McLaren said it is “good to show people what is happening” as they “won’t care if they can’t see it” and Scotland’s marine life is not “dull and grey” but “full of colour”, with the sea “absolutely teeming with an extraordinary range of marine creatures”.

The Marine Conservation Society (MSC), the UK’s leading ocean charity, found more than 30,000 wet wipes were discovered on Scottish beaches last year and it is also the country with the highest average duration of sewage discharges.

Less than 4% of all storm overflows in Scotland are monitored and reported whereas in England 89% of storm overflows are monitored.

The MSC said its volunteers found drinks-related litter on 95% of beach litter surveys last year in Scotland.

Kat Jones, the director of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, said litter is “plaguing” Scotland’s countryside and beaches and “threatening both human health and wildlife.”

Catherine Gemmell, Scotland Conservation Officer at the MSC, said the new First Minister “must prioritise action to drastically reduce the amount of sewage polluting Scotland’s seas.”

She added: “We also need to see action to stop pollution at source, including a ban on plastic in single-use wet wipes and support for reusable sanitary products as part of a Circular Economy.”