WARNING: This story contains images and vision that may be distressing.

A group of marine biologists in Costa Rica were horrified to discover an endangered sea turtle with a plastic straw lodged in its nostril.

Christine Figgener, a field biologist with a research interest in conservation filmed the excruciating eight minute-long extraction operation, which left the turtle bleeding and clearly wincing in pain.

Ms Figgener and her companions were on an in-water research trip in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, when they found a male Olive Ridley sea turtle with what at first they thought was a parasitic worm burrowing into its nose.