The plastic sea

We naturally fear the seas and oceans for the animals that are its habitants; jellyfish, sharks, barracudas, stingrays etc.

But I have come to a realization; nature is no longer our greatest enemy.

Maybe this year I have observed better, maybe this year I have been swimming more often in various regions, but I’m shocked.

I’m shocked by the quantity of plastic in the sea. To be more specific as to what I have seen with my own eyes; the Mediterranean Sea. Every single time I have gone swimming in this great beautiful sea, I have encountered great quantities of plastic. And not only “fresh plastic”, recently thrown away. No, I am now seeing more and more often degraded particles of plastic. Particles of plastic which are easier and easier incorporated in the food chain of animals, including ours.

It greatly saddens me, to see that we are contaminating the oceans and seas to a point where we are affecting every single life form, and even putting ourselves in danger. Because honestly, plastic chemical particles is not what you want in your system, right?.

We have grown up in a world based on the concept of “use and throw away”. We have learnt incorrectly that, since the beginning of the plastic era, you use it, and then throw it away with any further need of concern. We believed that the nature, and in this case, the ocean was great enough to buffer our impact.

We were mistaken. What we do, what we thrown away or not, has direct effect on the ecosystems worldwide. Even plastics that you throw out of the car window, that gets shipped from the USA to India, that you throw on the ground eventually flows towards the oceans. And there it accumulates, degrades into tiny particles, but never fully disappears, forever poisoning life.

Thus, I ask you; Think before you do something. Think before you simply throw rubbish on the ground in the park or out of your car. Teach your children, and those who are no longer children but still act disrespectfully towards the nature. You might think “oh, it’s not my problem anymore from the moment it’s out of my sight”. Well, you’re mistaken. It is your problem. It is your responsibility. Your behavior of buying, using and throwing away is your responsibility. Unless we act NOW, one day the future generation will have to pay for your carelessness and ignorance.

So please, do this one thing for yourself; Stop throwing plastics into the nature. Recycle it, reuse it. But don’t let it flow away into the nature, where it will eventually poison all life forms.