I was drowning, it was as simple as that. The water lapped around my head, clawing to get granted entrance to my lungs and become one with me. My hands struggled against the piece of plastic that was tethering me to the ground, that was delivering me to my death. It was stuck on a piece of coral, and I, unwillingly bound to the floating trash- was by extension, stuck to the coral.
My head tilted upwards, I looked up as another wave fell down and rocked the water surrounding me, jarring even more, air out of my system. Red started to creep into my line of vision as the lack of oxygen began to creep up with the promise of death soon afterwards. All I had wanted to do was go snorkelling and see the fish. "It will be fun" my parents had said, "the ocean is beautiful- completely safe!"
Well, it wasn't too beautiful anymore, being trapped to the ocean floor. Albeit, I still had a sense of respect for the ocean, it does so much for our planet and houses so many animals. Sure, I had wanted to see the cerulean blue of the water- but not this close.
With some struggle and a now bloodied ankle, I had managed to pull free a nick of a second before my lungs decided to inhale water. On instinct alone, I was able to navigate around these random floating objects I had written off as fish, and get back on shore of a deserted beach, one of which was not the one I departed from. I panted and lapped up the air as my scarlet vision began to turn back to normal, promising me I was going to live another day- or at least not drown.
My eyes took in the ocean and almost leapt back in disgust. The ocean was no ocean at all.
Things that had no place in the ocean were in the ocean...
Plastic bags, cups, straws, all had washed up on the beach, and the sea even had the wrappers floating around, just laying in the water. The things I had run into one my way onto the beach were not fish, they were all pieces of plastic. The very same plastic my entire race and I have had created and discarded.
I stared at the murky ocean water that was littered with trash and grimaced- how were we ever going to fix this? Would the ocean ever recover from this man-made catastrophe?
YOU ARE READING
The Revelations of a Snorkeler
Short Story#Planetorplastic The plastic had wrapped around her leg and tethered her to the ground, she should have never listened to her parents- this was not fun.
