Unfortunately, many of the balloons we release in celebration or just by mistake end up causing problems for wildlife, especially in the marine environment. Sometimes mistaken for food and ingested, and other times trailing ribbons that lead to entanglement, balloons floating free into nature can author stories with unhappy endings.
I wrote this for a Facebook post while working as the Science Communication Biotech at Cape Cod National Seashore. You can see the original post here…