Conservationists have discovered a whopping 35 lbs of plastic waste – including shopping bags and crisp packets – lodged in the stomach of a beached whale.

The whale’s corpse was found washed up on a beach in the French Atlantic coastal commune of Messanges on 8th May.

Volunteers from Itsas Arima, a non-profit environmental conservation organisation based in the nearby city of Bayonne, performed an autopsy on the five-metre (16-foot) marine mammal.

The whale was found to have died after ingesting 16 kilogrammes (35 lbs) of plastic waste mainly consisting of plastic bags but also crisp, pasta, and cigarette filter packets.

A volunteer from the organisation told Newsflash: “The animal was sick from a serious parasitic infection and was therefore unable to dive deep enough to find her usual food.

“That’s why she probably stayed at the sea surface and found only plastics to eat. The combination of these two things provoked an early death.”

The dead whale was a Cuvier’s beaked whale (Ziphius cavirostris), which is known for having the deepest and longest recorded dives among whales at 9,724 feet and 222 minutes respectively.

According to the US Federal Government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the species is one of the most frequently spotted beached whales.

In a post to Facebook that has since been shared hundreds of times, Itsas Arima wrote that it is “high time to value our waste as much as possible so it no longer ends up in nature”.

The organisation added: “If we don’t do it for ourselves, let’s do it for our oceans and their inhabitants.”