Fishing crew finds lobster branded with Pepsi can ‘tattoo’ in warning sign for rubbish in oceans

'This tells me there is a lot of garbage in the ocean'

The lobster was discovered branded with the Pepsi logo (Karissa Lindstrand)

A lobster with the Pepsi logo imprinted on its claw has been discovered, sparking concern over the amount of debris littering the oceans.

The creature was found by a lobster fishing crew off the coast of Grand Manan in New Brunswick, Canada.

Karissa Lindstrand, who reportedly drinks 12 cans of Pepsi a day, spotted the lobster as it was loaded into crate to be banded.

“I can’t say how he got it on,” she told Canada’s CBC news.

“It seemed more like a tattoo or a drawing on the lobster rather than something growing into it.”

Ms Lindstrand said she had never seen debris branded onto a sea creature in her four years of fishing off the Grand Manan coast.

“This tells me there is a lot of garbage in the ocean, if that's what's happening to the lobsters we get out from the water,” she said.

Nobody knows how the animal came to be imprinted with the logo, but Ms Lindstrand said some locals had suggested the lobster grew around the can as it was developing into an adult.

Others believe part of a Pepsi box may have stuck to the lobster when it was growing and printed onto its claw.

The volume of debris in our seas continues to grow, with an estimated 12m tonnes of plastic waste entering the oceans each year.

In the UK, litter on beaches increased by 10% this year, with a fifth of the rubbish made up of “on-the-go” food and drink items such as bottles, sandwich packaging, wrappers and cups.

The Marine Conservation Society said an average of 138 pieces of food and drink debris were found for every 100 metres of beach, highlighting the extent of the pollution.

Calls to address the rising tide of debris in the ocean are on the increase, most recently prompted by the BBC’s Blue Planet 2 series, which highlighted the extremely detrimental impact of rubbish on marine wildlife.

The UK government has pledged to look into how taxes or charges for single-use plastics could reduce waste.

The move comes after the introduction of a 5p charge on plastic carrier bags in 2015, which has led to an 80% drop in the number of bags handed out by retailers.