No More Plastic

Devastation

Emma was excited. Her family was booked to a hotel in Florida, and now they were heading to Cocoa Beach. She never went to the beach before, since she lived far in the north in Illinois. She always wondered what the ocean life looked like, since she only saw it in aquariums. Her favorite animal is the sea turtle. The peaceful creature that's majestic and breath-taking to her.

When the car came to a halt, Emma bounced up and down on her seat. She was hoping she could find a seat turtle around the beach somewhere.

"Alright, kids. Make sure you put on sun screen!" Her father smiled as he climbed out of the car. As her mother took their belongings out of the trunk, Emma was sprinting towards the beach in her pink polka dotted flip flops, racing her younger brother.

As Emma got to the sand first, her brother pouted. "Not fair."

"Come on, Georgie! We have so much to see!" Emma yelled happily as they ran across the sand.

To her distaste, as Emma ran closer to the water, the closer she could see solid objects littering the sand.

Emma stopped dead in her tracks. She was a few feet from the water. But she wasn't expecting to find this.

Water bottles, plastic bags, small pieces of glass, toothbrushes, straws, and bags of chips was scattered across the sand. But what horrified her the most was small dead fish also across the sand, the odor made her scrunch up her nose. She looked at a small fish in front of her, a straw sticking out of it's mouth and it's lifeless eyes looking down the beach.

Her little brother caught up to Emma's quick sprinting, and stopped right next to her. He looked at the sand, frowning.

"Poor fishies." George said, frowning at the dead fishes before him. Emma slowly nodded.

Suddenly, Emma heard gasps and cries. She turned her head to the left, and found a group of people surrounding something. She knew it was something urgent, just by seeing the amount of people.

"Come on!" Emma said as she sprinted toward her parents.

She was in the back of the huddled group, unable to see what was there. She pushed past the people in front of her, getting to the front of the people. She looked at what they were huddling around. Emma's eyes began to water as she stared at it.

How could this be? How could people be so careless?

There laid a sea turtle with a plastic bag tightening around it's neck. Not only was it choking, but a sharp pointy pencil ebbed itself into one of the sea turtle's flipper, causing blood to stream down onto the sand, turning it crimson red.

"Call 911!" She heard someone scream.

But Emma's eyes were glued to the sea turtle.

Emma was devastated.

"No more plastic. Please." Emma whisper cried as she bent down on her knees, sobbing into her hands.