Plastic food packaging was most common beach trash in 2018

A black-footed albatross tucks into plastic rubbish on the Leeward Islands of Hawaii. Seabirds depend on the ocean for sustenance, and the ocean is littered with plastic pollution.

A whale shark swims beside a plastic bag in the Gulf of Aden near Yemen. Although whale sharks are the biggest fish in the sea, they're still threatened by ingesting small bits of plastic.

A great bowerbird in Queensland, Australia, decorates its home with broken glass, plastic toys, and other pieces of human trash.

A sponge crab wears a clear sheet of plastic over its shell in Edithburgh, Australia. Historically, sponge crabs put sponges over their shells to camouflage themselves from predators. This man-made covering is not adequate protection.

Empty plastic and glass containers wash ashore and litter the habitat of a marine iguana on Ecuador's Santa Cruz Island. Marine iguanas can be found only on the Galápagos Islands.

A pair of curious rhesus macaques inspect a discarded plastic bottle outside the Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Marine flora mixes with plastic packaging at the water's surface. Below, a green sea turtle swims away from the rubbish.

A Laysan albatross and a chick rest near a mound of regurgitated trash. Some birds with smaller gizzards can't throw up undigestible plastic, so they're more susceptible to plastic pollution.

In Hawaii, a bottlenose dolphin plays with a plastic six-pack holder. Such wrapping can permanently harm young marine animals, choking or disfiguring them.

A pack of hyenas forage through mounds of trash at the city dump in Mekelle, Ethiopia. Bits of plastic are littered among leftover food scraps and bones discarded by humans.