the sea

I created, ‘Help me, please’ entirely from found marine debris. The net was given to me by a friend who hosts many beach clean-ups and often gives me materials (especially found rope and net) to create with, but everything else was found by me during my year of daily beach clean-ups. (@AYearofPlastic).

The book contains fishing line, rope, nurdles and some sort of plastic tape along with the washed up wood and snow fence. Fishing line is a death trap to sea birds and creatures, it can cause entanglements, tangling legs, beaks, fins, tails, you name it. It can also be ingested. Think about how hard it is to snap a piece of fishing line, it is tragic how much is in our seas.

I find rope, along with pieces of fishing net every time I do a beach clean up. Every single time. ALDFG (abandoned, lost, discarded fishing gear) is of huge concern, again there is the entrapment issue, which in itself is bad enough, but also it is all mainly plastic based, adding to the microplastic and plastic problems we have in the ocean.

I don’t find many nurdles where I am. In fact, over the course of daily beach cleans, of the almost 21,000 pieces of plastic I picked up, exactly 2 were nurdles. I cleaned up these nurdles when I was on vacation in Cornwall, England. They have a huge problem with them, as do many other parts of the world (and maybe even other parts of the Cape), Lewis Bay has many problems, but nurdles aren’t one of them. Nurdles are created in the manufacture of plastic for industrial use, they create nurdles for transport of the raw plastic to be made into all kinds of things. The problem is they are tiny and static-y and slippery little suckers and they don’t all make it into the shipping containers, or they spill as they’re being moved, or containers break or fall in to the sea, and being so light and small, the nurdles are easily moved by rivers and streams into the ocean. Once there, they are ingested, and break down into microplastics.

Did you know that plastics in the ocean become more toxic the longer they are there? Something in their make-up (citizen scientist here, you can look it up if you want more science-y info, lol) attracts toxins, and then absorbs them, making the plastic become more and more toxic to marine life and human life the longer it is in the ocean. I often thought about this fact as I was washing and sorting many of the 21,000 pieces of plastic I found, but it’s a new year, so let’s not delve too deep into that thought.

I’m not sure what the plastic strip is, but I am pretty confident that it is used in the shellfishing industry as I find quite a few strips like it. Now don’t get me wrong. I love shellfish. We go shellfishing here on the Cape, and have had many a meal from sea to table, but I’d like to keep my shellfish consumption plastic free, and with all of the plastic used, and then lost or discarded, in the shellfishing industry it’s getting harder to not be concerned.

I didn’t mean for my post about some art I created to become a lesson in the dangers of marine debris, but there you go. If you’re still reading, thank you. Please cut back on your single use plastic use whenever you can, and feel free to share this with a friend, or comment about ways you are helping the planet.

xo Sarah