Fish Have Feelings Too

I was reading the news the other day online and saw this picture of a sea lion caught in garbage being rescued by a diver. He was cutting the plastic found around the animal’s neck with his knife. But the worst part was that it wasn’t some isolated incident. In fact the photo was attached to a story regarding one of the world’s largest landfills: the Pacific Ocean.

Of course, I should have realized. But we are all so focused on the damage done by melting glaciers and arctic temperatures rising, we forget that global warming and pollution are not isolated incidents. This “synthetic sea” as Discover Magazine explains is a floating dump of manufactured waste which floats along ocean currents until it either evaporates into oceanic particles or washes up on distant shores.

All that post consumer waste consuming our oceans.

It’s not bad enough that we release carbon emissions for the latest “must have,” the current “have to own” or this week’s “simply can’t live without.” We are spreading our virus to the seas.

Sea lions are inheriting carbon footprints.

Something is definitely wrong with this picture. I don’t know what’s sadder, the fact that the majority of this waste is plastic and therefore not biodegradable or the fact that none noticed this moving island of rubbish until 1997. This floating dump is the same size as this country. Hard to imagine. But given the amount of garbage, packaging and one time use items we discard everyday, its surprising it’s not bigger.

They say they don’t know the full impact on the delicately balanced ecosystems contained within the ocean but it can’t be good. Nature is nature: only confused when interrupted by humanity.

You could toss a plastic coffee cup in the ocean in San Francisco and it could travel along the synthetic sea all the way to Asia then back around to Hawaii. Garbage travels further than any frequent flyer program could possibly allow. This seafill is no anomaly. Apparently, they are everywhere but we are all so focused on the myriad of other planet in crisis problems, the fish often come last on the list.

But fish have feelings too.

In fact, a lot of the human population depends on ocean fish for their health and nutrition. The fish die, the ocean gets sick, we get sick. The double edged sword of the world’s interconnectedness.

And it all comes down to reducing waste, recycling what we can and for goodness sake, offsetting offsetting offsetting. Cause it all comes back to what we do, what we leave behind and the choices we make.

Forewarned is forearmed? I wonder…