I am deeply honoured and unfathomably grateful for the recognition of my work in this year’s Ocean Geographic pictures of the year competition.

In the One Ocean category, receiving the Sylvia Earl award for outstanding achievement, this image of ‘happy moments’ consuming plastic was highly commended.

 

This school of dusky rabbit fishes or ‘happy moments’ were swarming from the depths to take bites from the floating debris. Each moving onward after a mouthful or two as the entire school successively fed.

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This image highlights the ever growing global issue of plastic consumption/wastage. This highly used & useful material is far less inert than we had come to believe. Our over dependance on single use plastics has led to a poisoning of ourselves and the planet well beyond our current comprehension. Plastic containers leach micro particles of plastic in to the contents contained (especially if exposed to heat or sunlight) & consequently in to the humans that consume them.

Our clothes when washed, release tiny amounts of nylon/polyester and other synthetics in to our waters, and subsequently, our planets blood stream. All of our ecosystems are under threat of our wastefulness, but none more so than our oceans. Deliberate dumping of waste aside, we have all been unwittingly trashing the planet now for decades.

Studies conducted by my personal friends & colleagues have found alarming levels of plastic in marine life in some of the most remote regions of this planet. Our consumer culture and subsequent waste creation/mismanagement has clearly now overtaken us.

 

How is your plastic consumption?

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