A 34-year-old photographer shared heartbreaking images of a dead turtle with a fishing line tangled around its throat.

According to experts, the turtle died after being starved of oxygen due to the plastic fishing line that was wrapped around its throat.

34-year-old Shane Gross, a photojournalist, shared the picture to raise awareness about plastic pollution and how they can risk the lives of animals.

In a statement that he released, Gross said, “My partner found the turtle already long dead with fishing line entangling both the turtle and the coral. In all likelihood, the green sea turtle became entangled and could not reach the surface to breathe and drowned.”

He added, “I removed the fishing line so no scavengers would also become entangled and took pictures to help prevent this from happening again. I felt terrible imagining what kind of suffering this turtle must have gone through.”

He continued, “People who see the photos say that they find the image very disturbing. Discarded fishing gear continues to kill animals long after its usefulness to humanity is gone either through entanglement, called Ghost Fishing, or it breaks down into microplastics causing problems throughout the entire food chain.”

He went on, “A large percentage of the great pacific garbage patch is made up of abandoned fishing gear. We need to re-think how we get our protein.”

View this post on Instagram

GRAPHIC CONTENT WARNING I'm sharing this image again as it recently won the conservation category of the Ocean Art Imaging Competition and has been shared many times by different media outlets and private citizens helping to bring attention to some major ocean issues. Ghost fishing and plastic pollution being two of them. A large percentage of the plastic pollution in our ocean is abandoned fishing gear. Although humans will gain no protein, fish, turtles, whales and other marine animals are being killed by these abandoned nets, fishing line and other gear – that is Ghost Fishing. There is still a remarkable amount of beauty in our ocean, but if we don't also draw attention to these truths, it gets too easy to ignore what we are doing to that that beauty. Feel free to share as a reminder to help the ocean's by reducing plastic use and certain seafood consumption. #seaturtle #greenturtle #bahamas #waste #ghostfishing #sad #plastic #plasticfreeoceans #conservation #biodiversity #extinction #empathy #gottolooovetheoceans

A post shared by Shane Gross (@shanegrossphoto) on Jan 20, 2020 at 2:04pm PST

Shane Gross is a Canadian Marine Conservation Photojournalist that is based in the Bahamas. He shares his clicks on his Instagram account, where he has over 7300 followers.

You can follow Gross here.