A Falmouth woman's university studies have exposed the deadly effects of plastic pollution on turtles from the moment they are born.

Emily Duncan, 23, who studies at the University of Exeter, has been conducting research into the deaths of post-hatchling turtles on the coast of Queensland in Australia, following earlier work on dead adult turtles in Cyprus.

Her study found that of 34 dead baby sea turtles found on the coast, 27 had plastic in their stomachs.

Plastic ingestion by adult sea turtles is well documented, with plastic bags a known killer when swallowed after being mistaken for jellyfish - a favourite food for some turtle species.

Around 26 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans every year, killing literally millions of marine creatures, and sea turtles are among the worst affected species.

Emily was given the chance to take her research down under to and study casualties of the world’s only annual stranding of post-hatchling turtles after The Sea Life Trust learned of her work in Europe with green turtles and logerheads and provided a grant to fund a seven-week trip.

The trust, a global charity based in Poole, has made sea turtle conservation and tackling plastic pollution key objectives for 2017.

Emily has been working logging the visible items of plastic discovered on dissection and also taking samples to examine for the presence of microplastics.

Emily’s findings from the first ever study of plastic ingestion by post-hatchlings in Australia, present a grim picture, one she does not expect to get any rosier when she conducts further tests for the presence of microplastics.

She said: “My research indicated that plastic pollution is a serious hazard to these animals literally from birth.”

“One larger juvenile handed in by a trawler which had found it way out in the ocean had no food in its stomach at all, just lots of bits of plastic.”

The head of the Sea Life Trust, Andy Bool, said research like Emily’s was vital to help understand the full impact of plastic pollution on the ocean food chain.

He said: “More and more plastic is ending up in our seas every day.”

“It is starting to appear higher and higher up the food chain, in sharks for example, and we need to raise awareness of this issue to encourage people to take action to stop it.

“Emily’s research will undoubtedly help make the case for urgent action even more compelling.”

Emily added: “We have access to equipment that can analyse the composition of individual plastic fragments and from the types of polymers they contain can often identify what sort of objects they came from.

“Hopefully my findings will strengthen calls for reducing plastic pollution in our seas and help identify the kind of plastics which present the greatest threat.”