This is the shocking moment a mother turtle struggled to nest on a beach filled with rubbish and marine debris.
It took the mother turtle about five hours to get back in the water after nesting. Other baby turtles can be seen battling their way to the water through the rubbish after hatching.
The scene was filmed at the Greta beach on Christmas Island by Taiwanese ecologist, Dr Hung-Chang Liu. It has raised the public awareness of marine debris after being aired on BBC Earth.
The mother turtle was forced to lay eggs on among foam, plastic bottles and even shoes on the sand.
The footage also shows dozens of turtle hatchlings trying to make their way back to the ocean.
However their journey were obstructed by the huge pile of rubbish and they had to crawled over and beneath the debris to get to the water.
A female sea turtle is struggling to lay eggs on Greta beach where it is surrounded by rubbish
A rubbish-filled beach has made her way to the ocean much more difficult
Dr Liu and his crew rescued the baby turtles and released them back to the ocean.
Dr Liu told Apple Daily Taiwan that he was a regular visitor to the Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean because he wanted to research on the famous tiny red crabs and coconut crabs.
He was surprised by the amount of trash and debris that were carried to the beach by ocean currents through the Indian Ocean.
‘There were four baby turtles dead and one lying weakly on the sand when I visited the beach last year,’ said Dr Liu.
He stressed the problem of marine debris had posed immense danger to the marine animals. He described the shore was full of rubbish.
The amount of rubbish that got washed up to the beach cannot be simply handled by a few people.
He noticed the female turtle swimming to the shore and trying to find a nesting place.
Hatchlings also face the same problem as they have to crawl through trash to get to the ocean
Piles of rubbish from nearby countries were washed ashore to the Greta beach on Christmas Island (file photo) which is situated between Indonesia and Australia
Christmas Island is a remote Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, close to Indonesia
The footage was taken by Dr Liu during a research trip of crabs last December.
The video has caught over 12 million views since it was put up on Facebook by BBC on January 11.
Dr Liu commented that the video was originally filmed to encourage the residents on Christmas Island to help clean the beach. It got picked up by news media later.