‘It fought like every other fish,’ he said. But its deformed body caught his attention

At first glance, it looked like something had attacked the Northern Pike he caught in the South Saskatchewan River in Medicine Hat, Alberta on Saturday — possibly another fish, the fisherman told Global News.

The injury was immediately apparent when the fish was out of water: There was a gruesome red band running around the middle of the fish’s otherwise green and yellow body, leaving the fish looking deformed.

But when 28-year-old Adam Turnbull looked closer, he realized that the injury couldn’t be blamed on other fish. Instead, it was clear humans were the culprit. Wrapped around the fish’s midsection, cinching its body so that its upper and lower halves bulged around it, was a piece of plastic litter.

“This is a Powerade wrapper,” Turnbull wrote on Facebook on Oct. 28, sharing pictures of the deformity that have been shared more than 10,000 times.

Until six decades ago, plastic wasn’t even mass produced, National Geographic reports. But today, as more and more plastic is used in Powerade wrappers and beyond, 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic are on earth — and 91 percent of the world’s plastic isn’t recycled, threatening fish, birds and mammals.

“(Q)uantifying the cumulative number for all plastic ever made was quite shocking,” Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia environmental engineer, told National Geographic. “This kind of increase would ‘break’ any system that was not prepared for it.”

And the injured fish Turnbull found is just one data point in that global system.

Turnbull wrote on Facebook that litter like the Powerade wrapper “takes up no room in your pocket until you get to a garbage can.”

Despite its injury, the fish wasn’t an easy catch, Turnbull said.

“It fought like every other fish,” he told Global News. “And then I saw the wound.”

Once Turnbull noticed the wrapper, he got to work trying to free the fish, he told Earther — and once he did, he released the once-strangled fish back into the water.

“I was very surprised a fish could even survive like this,” Turnbull told Fox News.

Then Turnbull went to Facebook and posted photos of the fish, hoping to show just how much an impact human litter can have on animals.

“Thanks to everyone who has had a look at this post as it was meant to raise awareness and that it has,” Turnbull wrote.

Turnbull told Earther that he talked with a biologist about the injury, and learned that the fish was probably able to digest food almost normally — despite the plastic that appeared to be ingrown in its body — because most of pikes’ digestive process occurs in the front part of the body.

Turnbull is an avid angler, he told Global News, and fishes almost every day. Though he said he hasn’t seen anything like the Powerade wrapper before, he said the experience changed his outlook on litter.

“... Seeing what it does first-hand makes you really want to grab that piece of garbage you see laying on the ground, whether it was yours or not,” Turnbull told Global News.

This story was originally published October 31, 2017 at 3:36 PM with the headline "‘It fought like every other fish,’ he said. But its deformed body caught his attention."