The Plastic Sea
Seascape
The Plastic Sea
Commentary by Paul Watson
Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
On the beach on San Juan Island, Washington, Allison Lance walks her
dogs every morning. She carries a plastic bag in her hand to carry the
bits and pieces of plastic debris she picks up. Each morning she fills
the bag, but by the next morning there is always another bag to be
filled. Joey Racano does the same in Huntington Beach further south in
California. The harvest of plastic waste is never-ending. Allison's
and Joey's beaches and practically every beach around the world are
similarly cursed.
Recently in the Galapagos I retrieved plastic motor oil bottles and
garbage bags from a remote beach on the island of Santa Cruz. Every
year during crossings of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans,
spotting plastic is a daily and regular occurrence.
A June 2006 United Nations Environmental Program report estimated that
there is an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating on or
near the surface of every square mile of ocean.
We live in a plastic convenience culture; virtually every human being
on this planet uses plastic materials directly and indirectly every
single day. Our babies begin life on Earth by using some 210 million
pounds of plastic diaper liners each year; we give them plastic milk
bottles, plastic toys, and buy their food in plastic jars, paying with
a plastic credit card. Even avoiding those babies by using
contraceptives results in mass disposal of billions of latex condoms,
diaphragms, and hard plastic birth control pill containers each year.
Every year we eat and drink from some thirty-four billion newly
manufactured bottles and containers. We patronize fast food
restaurants and buy products that consume another fourteen billion
pounds of plastic. In total, our societies produce an estimated sixty
billion tons of plastic material every year.
Each of us on average uses 190 pounds of plastic annually: bottled
water, fast food packaging, furniture, syringes, computers, computer
diskettes, packing materials, garbage bags and so much more. When you
consider that this plastic does not biodegrade and remains in our
ecosystems permanently, we are looking at an incredibly high volume of
accumulated plastic trash that has built up since the mid-twentieth
century.
Where does it go? There are only three places it can go: our earth,
our air, and our oceans.
All the plastic that has ever been produced has been buried in
landfills, incinerated, and dumped into lakes, rivers, and oceans.
When incinerated, the plastics disperse non-biodegradable pollutants,
much of which inevitably find their way into marine ecosystems as
microscopic particles.
Back in 1991, my ship, the Sea Shepherd, was anchored in the harbor of
Port of Spain, Trinidad. It began to rain a hard steady downpour. A
few hours later, the entire surface area of the harbor was dirty
white, as if an ice floe had entered this tropical port. The "floe"
consisted of Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and assorted plastic
materials as far as the eye could see and it had come down from the
streets, gutters, and streams into the harbor. And, of course, it was
all washing out to sea, dispersed by wind and tide.
What happened to it after that? The sun and the brine broke it down
into little pellets of Styrofoam and little pieces of plastic - each
an insidious, floating, deadly mine set adrift in an ocean of life.
And over the years these little nodules have drifted. Many have been
ingested by birds and fish. Weeks or months later, their victims
decompose on the surface of the water or on a beach, re-exposing the
nodules to the light of the sun, to be blown by the winds back into
the sea. These vicious little inorganic parasites continue to maim and
kill in an endless assault upon life in our oceans.
The simple fact is that when you drop a Styrofoam cup onto the street,
you're causing more damage than you would by dropping a stick of
dynamite into the ocean. You set in motion an invasion of thousands of
killer plastibots that will cause death and destruction for centuries
to come.
Eighteen billion disposable diapers end up in the oceans each year;
Americans alone toss 2.5 million plastic bottles into the sea every
hour. Our oceans are full of floating plastic debris. There is no
place in the oceans where a fine trawl will not reveal plastic
nodules. Studies by Captain Charles Moore and the Algalita Foundation
found that even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, plastic nodules
have been found to outweigh plankton by a ratio of six to one. Similar
studies in the Atlantic have revealed the same ratio.
In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks, marooned on a desert island in the
South Pacific, finds a plastic siding of a portable outhouse washed up
on the beach. The stuff is everywhere. I have found plastic bottles
with Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English writing littering the
beaches of even the most remote Aleutian Islands.
And yet we give this global threat very little thought at all. It is
out of the sight of land-dwelling humanity, and thus out of mind. The
only industry that seems concerned about plastic pollution is the
marine insurance business. The intake of plastics into the cooling
systems of engines is one of the leading causes of maritime engine
failures. Last year, Japanese insurance companies paid $50 million in
claims involving plastic-related engine and prop damage.
Drifting in our seas are tens of thousands of miles of monofilament
ghost drift nets and lines. This same netting ensnares ship props and
the necks of sea lions and turtles. Over the years, my crew has
retrieved hundreds of floating monofilament nets from the sea. All of
them contained the rotting corpses of fish and birds.
In a well-documented beach clean-up in Orange County, California,
volunteers collected 106 million items, weighing thirteen tons. The
debris included preproduction plastic pellets, foamed plastics, and
hard plastics; plastic constituted 99 percent of the total material
collected. The most abundant item found on the beaches of Orange
County was preproduction plastic pellets, most of which originated
from transport losses. Approximately one quadrillion of these pellets,
or 60 billion pounds, are annually manufactured in the United States
alone. You never hear about these spillages in the newspaper, and
there is not a single plastic pellet spillage response crew anywhere
in the world.
The plastic products that end up in the sea from consumers constitute
less than 30 percent of the total plastics dumped into the oceans each
year. The greater amount comes from accidental spillage of plastic
resin pellets produced by the petrochemical industry for the purpose
of manufacturing consumer plastic products, or the breakdown of
finished products into Styrofoam nodules or hard plastic particles.
Plastic nodules are lost routinely in both the shipping and
manufacturing stages, spilling from shipboard containers or from
trucks onto streets and into storm drains.
Oil spills occur every day in our oceans, and major spills occur on
average every two weeks somewhere in the world's marine ecosystem.
Although these oil spills are notorious killers of marine wildlife,
their deadly impact is confined to relatively small areas
geographically, and the impact is reduced with time. The Exxon Valdez
spill, for example, was confined to Alaska's Prince William Sound, and
although the impact on wildlife was felt for many years, the ecosystem
is slowly recovering. Yet this other kind of petrochemical spill is
more invasive and permanent. This type of spill is cumulative. The
spillage is never cleaned up and removed, but accumulates perpetually.
I don't think that I am exaggerating when I say that the spillage of
plastic resin pellets poses a significant and unappreciated threat to
survival of sea life. The oceans are becoming plasticized. This threat
becomes more lethal each year as the cumulative amount increases. The
impact of this spillage contributes to more casualties than all of the
world's annual oil spills, yet we know very little about the problem.
In fact, the public does not even recognize plastic resin pellet
spillage as a problem at all.
Plastic pellets also pose an additional threat. They act as a
transport medium for toxic chemicals. Many of these pellets contain
polychlorinated biphenyl's (PCB). The chemicals were either absorbed
from ambient seawater or used in the manufacture of plasticizers prior
to the 1970's. This transfer of PCB's from ingested pellets into birds
was conclusively proven and documented in the fatty tissues of great
shearwaters (Puffinus gravis). Studies have shown that 75 percent of
all shearwaters examined contained ingested plastic.
Of 312 species of seabirds, some 111 species, or 36 percent, are known
to mistakenly ingest plastic. In Hawaii, sixteen of the eighteen
resident seabird species are plastic ingestors, and 70 percent of this
ingestion is of floating plastic resin pellets. Seabirds in Alaska
have been found to have stomachs entirely filled with indigestible
plastic. Penguins on South African beaches have suffered high chick
mortality from eating plastic regurgitated by the parents, and 90
percent of blue petrel chicks examined on South Africa's remote Marion
Island had plastic particles in their stomachs.
It is a global problem, and for seabirds there are no safe places. For
most people, the ocean is a big toilet. The belief is that garbage,
sewage, and plastics are dispersed and taken away.
Unfortunately, nothing is really ever "taken away"; it is simply
perpetually circulated. The oceans are pulsating with powerful
currents, and these currents keep plastic debris in constant
circulation. As a result, debris travels in what are called "gyres."
The gyre concentrates the garbage in areas where currents meet. For
example, one of the largest of these movements in the Atlantic is
called the central gyre, and it moves in a clockwise circular pattern
driven by the Gulf Stream. The central gyre concentrates heavily in
the northern Sargasso Sea, a place that is also host to numerous
spawning fish species.
The number of floating plastic pellets found in the Sargasso Sea has
been measured in excess of 3,500 parts per square kilometer. The same
ratio of 3,500 parts per square kilometer was found in the waters of
the southern coasts of Africa. This study found that plastic pollution
had increased in South African waters from 1989 to the present by 190
percent.
Birds, turtles, and fish mistake the tiny nodules for fish eggs.
Garbage bags, plastic soda rings, and Styrofoam particles are
regularly eaten by sea turtles. A floating garbage bag looks like a
jellyfish to a turtle. The plastic clogs the turtles' intestines,
robbing the animals of vital nutrients, and it has been the cause of
untold turtle losses to starvation. All seven of the world's sea
turtle species suffer mortality from both plastic ingestion and
plastic entanglement. One turtle found dead off Hawaii carried over
1,000 pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. And recently, a
land-based turtle rescued in a Florida waterway by Stephen Nordlinger
was unable to submerge due to the amount of Styrofoam trapped in its
body, making it permanently buoyant.
The amount of plastic pellets present on beaches is astonishingly
high. In New Zealand, one beach was found to contain over 100,000
pellets per square meter. Thus, it is not so farfetched to suggest
that people are in fact sunbathing on plastic beaches - literally. I
have stopped my ship in mid-ocean and found flip-flops, suntan oil
bottles, plastic Coke bottles, garbage bags, and even large floating
industrial plastic sheets. In each place sampled, we have also found
plastic pellets.
Once, on the bottom of the Mediterranean off France, I witnessed a
scene that appalled me. The entire bottom was made of plastic. Bottles
and plastic bags swaying with the tide, replacing the sea grasses and
algae. It was especially sad to see one little fish scurry from behind
a white plastic bag to take cover from me in a sunken automobile tire.
Brushing aside another drifting white bag, I spied a flicker of red on
the bottom. What I found was a plastic face staring up at me with a
great big smile and two enormous plastic ears. It was the decapitated
head of a Mickey Mouse doll.
It's a plastic sea out there.
r e l p o m i r a c u l o u s
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© The Plastic Sea
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Commentary by Paul Watson
®ê¶Þ© Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© On the beach on San Juan Island, Washington, Allison Lance walks her
®ê¶Þ© dogs every morning. She carries a plastic bag in her hand to carry the
®ê¶Þ© bits and pieces of plastic debris she picks up. Each morning she fills
®ê¶Þ© the bag, but by the next morning there is always another bag to be
®ê¶Þ© filled. Joey Racano does the same in Huntington Beach further south in
®ê¶Þ© California. The harvest of plastic waste is never-ending. Allison's
®ê¶Þ© and Joey's beaches and practically every beach around the world are
®ê¶Þ© similarly cursed.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Recently in the Galapagos I retrieved plastic motor oil bottles and
®ê¶Þ© garbage bags from a remote beach on the island of Santa Cruz. Every
®ê¶Þ© year during crossings of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans,
®ê¶Þ© spotting plastic is a daily and regular occurrence.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© A June 2006 United Nations Environmental Program report estimated that
®ê¶Þ© there is an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic debris floating on or
®ê¶Þ© near the surface of every square mile of ocean.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© We live in a plastic convenience culture; virtually every human being
®ê¶Þ© on this planet uses plastic materials directly and indirectly every
®ê¶Þ© single day. Our babies begin life on Earth by using some 210 million
®ê¶Þ© pounds of plastic diaper liners each year; we give them plastic milk
®ê¶Þ© bottles, plastic toys, and buy their food in plastic jars, paying with
®ê¶Þ© a plastic credit card. Even avoiding those babies by using
®ê¶Þ© contraceptives results in mass disposal of billions of latex condoms,
®ê¶Þ© diaphragms, and hard plastic birth control pill containers each year.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Every year we eat and drink from some thirty-four billion newly
®ê¶Þ© manufactured bottles and containers. We patronize fast food
®ê¶Þ© restaurants and buy products that consume another fourteen billion
®ê¶Þ© pounds of plastic. In total, our societies produce an estimated sixty
®ê¶Þ© billion tons of plastic material every year.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Each of us on average uses 190 pounds of plastic annually: bottled
®ê¶Þ© water, fast food packaging, furniture, syringes, computers, computer
®ê¶Þ© diskettes, packing materials, garbage bags and so much more. When you
®ê¶Þ© consider that this plastic does not biodegrade and remains in our
®ê¶Þ© ecosystems permanently, we are looking at an incredibly high volume of
®ê¶Þ© accumulated plastic trash that has built up since the mid-twentieth
®ê¶Þ© century.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Where does it go? There are only three places it can go: our earth,
®ê¶Þ© our air, and our oceans.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© All the plastic that has ever been produced has been buried in
®ê¶Þ© landfills, incinerated, and dumped into lakes, rivers, and oceans.
®ê¶Þ© When incinerated, the plastics disperse non-biodegradable pollutants,
®ê¶Þ© much of which inevitably find their way into marine ecosystems as
®ê¶Þ© microscopic particles.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Back in 1991, my ship, the Sea Shepherd, was anchored in the harbor of
®ê¶Þ© Port of Spain, Trinidad. It began to rain a hard steady downpour. A
®ê¶Þ© few hours later, the entire surface area of the harbor was dirty
®ê¶Þ© white, as if an ice floe had entered this tropical port. The "floe"
®ê¶Þ© consisted of Styrofoam, plastic bottles, and assorted plastic
®ê¶Þ© materials as far as the eye could see and it had come down from the
®ê¶Þ© streets, gutters, and streams into the harbor. And, of course, it was
®ê¶Þ© all washing out to sea, dispersed by wind and tide.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© What happened to it after that? The sun and the brine broke it down
®ê¶Þ© into little pellets of Styrofoam and little pieces of plastic - each
®ê¶Þ© an insidious, floating, deadly mine set adrift in an ocean of life.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© And over the years these little nodules have drifted. Many have been
®ê¶Þ© ingested by birds and fish. Weeks or months later, their victims
®ê¶Þ© decompose on the surface of the water or on a beach, re-exposing the
®ê¶Þ© nodules to the light of the sun, to be blown by the winds back into
®ê¶Þ© the sea. These vicious little inorganic parasites continue to maim and
®ê¶Þ© kill in an endless assault upon life in our oceans.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© The simple fact is that when you drop a Styrofoam cup onto the street,
®ê¶Þ© you're causing more damage than you would by dropping a stick of
®ê¶Þ© dynamite into the ocean. You set in motion an invasion of thousands of
®ê¶Þ© killer plastibots that will cause death and destruction for centuries
®ê¶Þ© to come.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Eighteen billion disposable diapers end up in the oceans each year;
®ê¶Þ© Americans alone toss 2.5 million plastic bottles into the sea every
®ê¶Þ© hour. Our oceans are full of floating plastic debris. There is no
®ê¶Þ© place in the oceans where a fine trawl will not reveal plastic
®ê¶Þ© nodules. Studies by Captain Charles Moore and the Algalita Foundation
®ê¶Þ© found that even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, plastic nodules
®ê¶Þ© have been found to outweigh plankton by a ratio of six to one. Similar
®ê¶Þ© studies in the Atlantic have revealed the same ratio.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© In the movie Castaway, Tom Hanks, marooned on a desert island in the
®ê¶Þ© South Pacific, finds a plastic siding of a portable outhouse washed up
®ê¶Þ© on the beach. The stuff is everywhere. I have found plastic bottles
®ê¶Þ© with Japanese, Chinese, Russian, and English writing littering the
®ê¶Þ© beaches of even the most remote Aleutian Islands.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© And yet we give this global threat very little thought at all. It is
®ê¶Þ© out of the sight of land-dwelling humanity, and thus out of mind. The
®ê¶Þ© only industry that seems concerned about plastic pollution is the
®ê¶Þ© marine insurance business. The intake of plastics into the cooling
®ê¶Þ© systems of engines is one of the leading causes of maritime engine
®ê¶Þ© failures. Last year, Japanese insurance companies paid $50 million in
®ê¶Þ© claims involving plastic-related engine and prop damage.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Drifting in our seas are tens of thousands of miles of monofilament
®ê¶Þ© ghost drift nets and lines. This same netting ensnares ship props and
®ê¶Þ© the necks of sea lions and turtles. Over the years, my crew has
®ê¶Þ© retrieved hundreds of floating monofilament nets from the sea. All of
®ê¶Þ© them contained the rotting corpses of fish and birds.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© In a well-documented beach clean-up in Orange County, California,
®ê¶Þ© volunteers collected 106 million items, weighing thirteen tons. The
®ê¶Þ© debris included preproduction plastic pellets, foamed plastics, and
®ê¶Þ© hard plastics; plastic constituted 99 percent of the total material
®ê¶Þ© collected. The most abundant item found on the beaches of Orange
®ê¶Þ© County was preproduction plastic pellets, most of which originated
®ê¶Þ© from transport losses. Approximately one quadrillion of these pellets,
®ê¶Þ© or 60 billion pounds, are annually manufactured in the United States
®ê¶Þ© alone. You never hear about these spillages in the newspaper, and
®ê¶Þ© there is not a single plastic pellet spillage response crew anywhere
®ê¶Þ© in the world.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© The plastic products that end up in the sea from consumers constitute
®ê¶Þ© less than 30 percent of the total plastics dumped into the oceans each
®ê¶Þ© year. The greater amount comes from accidental spillage of plastic
®ê¶Þ© resin pellets produced by the petrochemical industry for the purpose
®ê¶Þ© of manufacturing consumer plastic products, or the breakdown of
®ê¶Þ© finished products into Styrofoam nodules or hard plastic particles.
®ê¶Þ© Plastic nodules are lost routinely in both the shipping and
®ê¶Þ© manufacturing stages, spilling from shipboard containers or from
®ê¶Þ© trucks onto streets and into storm drains.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Oil spills occur every day in our oceans, and major spills occur on
®ê¶Þ© average every two weeks somewhere in the world's marine ecosystem.
®ê¶Þ© Although these oil spills are notorious killers of marine wildlife,
®ê¶Þ© their deadly impact is confined to relatively small areas
®ê¶Þ© geographically, and the impact is reduced with time. The Exxon Valdez
®ê¶Þ© spill, for example, was confined to Alaska's Prince William Sound, and
®ê¶Þ© although the impact on wildlife was felt for many years, the ecosystem
®ê¶Þ© is slowly recovering. Yet this other kind of petrochemical spill is
®ê¶Þ© more invasive and permanent. This type of spill is cumulative. The
®ê¶Þ© spillage is never cleaned up and removed, but accumulates perpetually.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© I don't think that I am exaggerating when I say that the spillage of
®ê¶Þ© plastic resin pellets poses a significant and unappreciated threat to
®ê¶Þ© survival of sea life. The oceans are becoming plasticized. This threat
®ê¶Þ© becomes more lethal each year as the cumulative amount increases. The
®ê¶Þ© impact of this spillage contributes to more casualties than all of the
®ê¶Þ© world's annual oil spills, yet we know very little about the problem.
®ê¶Þ© In fact, the public does not even recognize plastic resin pellet
®ê¶Þ© spillage as a problem at all.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Plastic pellets also pose an additional threat. They act as a
®ê¶Þ© transport medium for toxic chemicals. Many of these pellets contain
®ê¶Þ© polychlorinated biphenyl's (PCB). The chemicals were either absorbed
®ê¶Þ© from ambient seawater or used in the manufacture of plasticizers prior
®ê¶Þ© to the 1970's. This transfer of PCB's from ingested pellets into birds
®ê¶Þ© was conclusively proven and documented in the fatty tissues of great
®ê¶Þ© shearwaters (Puffinus gravis). Studies have shown that 75 percent of
®ê¶Þ© all shearwaters examined contained ingested plastic.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Of 312 species of seabirds, some 111 species, or 36 percent, are known
®ê¶Þ© to mistakenly ingest plastic. In Hawaii, sixteen of the eighteen
®ê¶Þ© resident seabird species are plastic ingestors, and 70 percent of this
®ê¶Þ© ingestion is of floating plastic resin pellets. Seabirds in Alaska
®ê¶Þ© have been found to have stomachs entirely filled with indigestible
®ê¶Þ© plastic. Penguins on South African beaches have suffered high chick
®ê¶Þ© mortality from eating plastic regurgitated by the parents, and 90
®ê¶Þ© percent of blue petrel chicks examined on South Africa's remote Marion
®ê¶Þ© Island had plastic particles in their stomachs.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© It is a global problem, and for seabirds there are no safe places. For
®ê¶Þ© most people, the ocean is a big toilet. The belief is that garbage,
®ê¶Þ© sewage, and plastics are dispersed and taken away.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Unfortunately, nothing is really ever "taken away"; it is simply
®ê¶Þ© perpetually circulated. The oceans are pulsating with powerful
®ê¶Þ© currents, and these currents keep plastic debris in constant
®ê¶Þ© circulation. As a result, debris travels in what are called "gyres."
®ê¶Þ© The gyre concentrates the garbage in areas where currents meet. For
®ê¶Þ© example, one of the largest of these movements in the Atlantic is
®ê¶Þ© called the central gyre, and it moves in a clockwise circular pattern
®ê¶Þ© driven by the Gulf Stream. The central gyre concentrates heavily in
®ê¶Þ© the northern Sargasso Sea, a place that is also host to numerous
®ê¶Þ© spawning fish species.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© The number of floating plastic pellets found in the Sargasso Sea has
®ê¶Þ© been measured in excess of 3,500 parts per square kilometer. The same
®ê¶Þ© ratio of 3,500 parts per square kilometer was found in the waters of
®ê¶Þ© the southern coasts of Africa. This study found that plastic pollution
®ê¶Þ© had increased in South African waters from 1989 to the present by 190
®ê¶Þ© percent.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Birds, turtles, and fish mistake the tiny nodules for fish eggs.
®ê¶Þ© Garbage bags, plastic soda rings, and Styrofoam particles are
®ê¶Þ© regularly eaten by sea turtles. A floating garbage bag looks like a
®ê¶Þ© jellyfish to a turtle. The plastic clogs the turtles' intestines,
®ê¶Þ© robbing the animals of vital nutrients, and it has been the cause of
®ê¶Þ© untold turtle losses to starvation. All seven of the world's sea
®ê¶Þ© turtle species suffer mortality from both plastic ingestion and
®ê¶Þ© plastic entanglement. One turtle found dead off Hawaii carried over
®ê¶Þ© 1,000 pieces of plastic in its stomach and intestines. And recently, a
®ê¶Þ© land-based turtle rescued in a Florida waterway by Stephen Nordlinger
®ê¶Þ© was unable to submerge due to the amount of Styrofoam trapped in its
®ê¶Þ© body, making it permanently buoyant.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© The amount of plastic pellets present on beaches is astonishingly
®ê¶Þ© high. In New Zealand, one beach was found to contain over 100,000
®ê¶Þ© pellets per square meter. Thus, it is not so farfetched to suggest
®ê¶Þ© that people are in fact sunbathing on plastic beaches - literally. I
®ê¶Þ© have stopped my ship in mid-ocean and found flip-flops, suntan oil
®ê¶Þ© bottles, plastic Coke bottles, garbage bags, and even large floating
®ê¶Þ© industrial plastic sheets. In each place sampled, we have also found
®ê¶Þ© plastic pellets.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Once, on the bottom of the Mediterranean off France, I witnessed a
®ê¶Þ© scene that appalled me. The entire bottom was made of plastic. Bottles
®ê¶Þ© and plastic bags swaying with the tide, replacing the sea grasses and
®ê¶Þ© algae. It was especially sad to see one little fish scurry from behind
®ê¶Þ© a white plastic bag to take cover from me in a sunken automobile tire.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© Brushing aside another drifting white bag, I spied a flicker of red on
®ê¶Þ© the bottom. What I found was a plastic face staring up at me with a
®ê¶Þ© great big smile and two enormous plastic ears. It was the decapitated
®ê¶Þ© head of a Mickey Mouse doll.
®ê¶Þ©
®ê¶Þ© It's a plastic sea out there.
We need to put all that stuff back where we found it.
--
Relpo Miraculous
"The study of more than 1,800 heart-bypass patients found that those who had
people praying for them had as many complications as those who did not. In
fact, one group of patients who knew they were the subject of prayers fared
worse."
Jeffery A. Dusek of the Harvard Medical School,
in the April 4 issue of the American Heart Journal.