An Endless Sea of Gray

The oceans; Untapped, unimaginable wealth under the surface. No one has ever been to the deep. No one has seen the true depth of these vast, aqueous bodies. Humans know this, but mermaids... they know much different.

She shot through the water, her sleek, streamlined body cutting through the waves like an arrow. She drew short of the vast school of fish with a burst of bubbles, and giggled as their small fins tickled her arms and tail. They were not afraid of her. Small fish, big fish, whales, sharks, dolphins, she was one with them all. They would not shy away.

Her  dainty features twisted into a frown. Everyday the school became smaller, and yet, there were no predators to be found. On closer inspection, swirling through the glistening fish were flashes of white. Plastic, she thought, why is there always more plastic? Wading through the small darting bodies she reached the plastic bag that had ensnared several small fish and disentangled them from it. She sighed at the sight of the rippling plastic. There was nowhere to put it. It never went away.

She cursed plastic bags and straws and water bottles to the depths of the Marianas trench, knowing it would do no good. Humans were wasteful, had always been, but to be so inconsiderate, so careless! She felt angry,  but more than that, she felt sorry for them. To be so blinded by their folly that they failed to see the destruction they caused!

One day, during which the surface seemed more cloudy than usual, the young mermaid went to investigate. Her cry of dismay rippled through the water as she beheld a young whale trapped and panicked in a vast trash float. In his eyes there was a look of fear, a look of utter hopelessness that mirrored the mermaid's own expression. Trying frantically to free the poor creature, the drifting plastic entwined itself around her body like slithering snakes. Tears leaked into the ocean as she pulled helplessly at the trash, as she watched the light go out of the majestic creature's eyes- fathomless and wise. It was then that she stopped fighting. And when the invasive plastic found it's way into her mouth, her lungs, she didn't struggle against it. She said goodbye to her once beautiful ocean home, and breathed deeply.

Trapped and suffocating. An entire ocean- drowning in a sea of endless gray. A never-ending expanse of trash, and the indisputable evidence of the wastefulness of the human race.

Mermaids can live hundreds of years. They watch the water's surface, the closest thing they have to a sky, become black with filthy plastic. Maybe one day they will be talking about the islands: Unexplored, unimaginable expanses of filth, stretching as far as the eye can see. No one can go to the surface. No one knows the true extent of the plight on those once beautiful lands. Mermaids know this... and they pity us for it.