Plastic Ocean

The lady rushed in. "There are dead things all over the beach!"

It was a common report. I took a guess. "A bunch of crabs?"

She looked puzzled. "There were some of those, too, but a lot more of these." She held up a baggie.

I took it and examined the contents. I finally found the creature buried in the white fragments. "This looks like a pipe fish." I looked up at her. "And these are all over the beach?"

"Yes, my kids found them. There are lots of them."

I looked at the other material in the bag. "It looks like dead sea grass." I took some out and tugged on it. "Wow. What is this stuff?"

I heard someone come into the back office and glanced around the corner. Steve was pulling off his boots. "What's up, Lia?"

I held up the baggie. "Did you see anything like this on the beach during your tidepool walk?"

He came over and took the bag. "Yeah, there's lots of dead sea grass washed up today."

"I don't think this is sea grass. Take a closer look. This seems to be some kind of plastic."

He squished the bag between his fingers. "Ugh! There's a dead pipe fish, too."

I left him with the bag and went back to the front counter. More people had come in and were discussing the stuff on the beach. "Did all of you find something similar?"

They all agreed. I started a list of the locations where they had found it. Steve came out and I dropped my voice. "Better call the Marine Sanctuary. This is a wide spread event. I'll go out and collect more samples."

I spent the rest of the day scooping up baggies of death from various locations along the coastline. By the time I returned to the office, the Park Superintendent and a biologist from the sanctuary had arrived. I turned over my finds to them. "It's everywhere, and it's not just affecting pipe fish. What is this stuff?"

The biologist handed me a sheet. "It's plastic Easter grass. Container ship lost it during a storm. Several tons of it. This is just what has washed up."

I felt sick to my stomach thinking of all the dead sea life I'd already seen that day. "And there's more still floating around out there?"

The biologist nodded. "This is just the beginning."

The Park Superintendent looked pale. "What can we do?"

The biologist shook his head. "Stop using plastic. But for now, ask anyone with a net to start scooping and hope it's not too late."