Plastic Ocean

The Ocean used to be blue. It used to reflect the sunlight and smell like salt and fish. Waves used to break onto golden sand, where families sat under parasols drinking water – soda's even! – from one-litre plastic bottles.

We've lost the blue, the reflection and the smells. We've lost the golden sand and soda's.

But the bottles and parasols are still there, littering the ocean. Time has broken them down to tiny pieces, the size of half a nail. Multicoloured they float on the water and spill on the beaches that are littered with debris brought to us by the Ocean's currents.

The Southeast Farallon Island used to be beautiful. Now it's covered in slums and garbage and filthy people roaming through dark alleys. They clutch the half-litre cans of drinkable water they are able to afford tightly, afraid of spilling it. Paid with money made by scavenging for sellable objects floating around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

It's under the acidic rain that I trek through the garbage piles on the beach, shoes sinking into rotting fish and weakened plastic. Then I step onto the makeshift pontoon made of plastic containers and discarded nets. It rolls on the waves dangerously, but this island's inhabitants have been walking it since birth. It's the only way to reach one's boat. Tiny boats we made ourselves out of rusty plates of metal and strips of plastic.

They look just as dilapidated as they sound.

I climb my tiny boat, ignoring the groaning sounds, and untie the rope – made of fishnets – that ties it to the pontoon. I grab the oars and start making the one-hour trek to the Garbage Patch. The surface of the ocean is littered with shiny bits of plastic, dead fish and large clusters of garbage clinging together. The smell is horrible. And in all honesty, it feels like rowing through soup instead of water. The density of microplastics is so high that the water barely escapes a closed fist anymore.

Sometimes I wish I could live in the past, when the water was still blue and the fish still alive. But then I remember that the past is the cause of this stench, these mountains of garbage and tonnes of microplastics.

If they could see me now, bending over the edge of my boat, hands rooting through the piles of trash, looking for old watches and necklaces, would they change what they did?

It doesn't matter though, it's the past. And we're the ones who have to deal with the future.

I found a clock that day, not too rusty, the paint still mostly there. I got three dollars for it. Enough to buy half a litre of water.

It's worth my shrivelled fingers, the plastic coating my arms and the cut in my palm made by a piece of metal. And even if it gets infected, I don't have a choice. Tomorrow I will be going out onto the Plastic Ocean again.