Swimming in rough seas always brings out the child in me.
We were in a False Bay rock pool during spring tide last week, laughing as the waves crashed over the wall and swirled us backwards. A group of young boys jumped in and we were all having a whale of a time.
Then I felt something against my hand and pulled up a plastic bag. “Ah no,” I said. “More plastic pollution.” One of the boys replied: “Yes aunty, fish can eat that and can die. Their stomachs get full of plastic.” I looked at him a little surprised. Many adults don’t even make the link between litter and its effect on marine life. I asked him if he had learned that at school and he said he had. I was so happy to hear that. One almost gives up on adults, but there is some hope in getting the message across to the next generation. Plastic is a wonderful invention, but its disposal is a massive problem, particularly “single use” plastic items. There are some shocking figures: one estimate is that there are over five trillion pieces of plastic rubbish in the sea, some found up to depths of 11 km. The problem is, plastic is new to marine animals. Nothing in their evolutionary journey has prepared them for this, so it is no surprise that a sea turtle, for instance, may see a thin plastic bag floating in the ocean as a jellyfish and swallow it. If they eat enough plastic, marine animals die. It fills up their stomachs so food cannot be digested and they starve to death. The United Nations estimates that plastic kills over a million seabirds every year, and hundreds of thousands of marine mammals. You can google a video showing people battling to remove a plastic straw from the nostril of a turtle. The animal was bleeding and clearly in distress. And for what? Who really needs a straw for Pete’s sake? Just say no. Which brings me to other obvious things we can do to reduce “single-use” plastic. Take your own reusable bags to supermarkets. A no-brainer, yet check how many people don’t. Most supermarkets now sell reusable mesh bags to weigh your fruit and veg in instead of those flimsy – and potentially lethal – plastic bags. Buy them. Say no to plastic cutlery when you get take-aways. Keep metal cutlery in your office, your cubbyhole, your bag. And say no to bottled water! Buy a reusable bottle. I regard bottled water as one of the biggest marketing cons of modern times. We pay substantial amounts to have our water purified to drinking standards, but then buy water from companies that take it out of a hole in the ground, stick it in a bottle, and charge the public more for it than for a bottle of Coke. Nearly a million plastic beverage bottles are sold worldwide every minute. Millions end up floating in the ocean. If swimming in spring tides brings out the child in me, swimming in plastic pollution brings out the angry woman.
