Ghost Ship

The future father-in-law of Dustin Hoffman's character in The Graduate (1967) advised him to get into plastics, as that was the future. Good advice it would seem. Today the earth and the oceans are littered with it.

What is this compulsion to walk around carrying a plastic bottle of water? The "drink more water" advice has run amok. I really have no recollection of seeing, in my pre-plastic water bottle childhood, the bodies of people dead from thirst strewn along the roadsides of my hometown.

When I lived in Asia, the problem of plastic garbage was extreme, exacerbated by lack of garbage collection facilities and for sure, lack of recycling. The oceans are full of it, the beaches are full of it to say nothing of the streets and fields. I will never ever forget the disturbing experience of snorkeling off the beach in southern Luzon in the Philippines, swimming through a sea of plastic (Hovering).

Hiking along the beach near Tofino the other week I came across this sight of beachcombed trash that had been picked up and piled, ready for collection. Taking a closer look I could see many plastic bottles, plastic bags, styrofoam - the usual - and quite a few shoes. Apparently about a dozen shoe-clad feet have turned up on our shores since 2007, prompting great speculation and mystery. I did NOT look to see if these shoes contained any feet.

There has been a lot of talk recently about expectations of debris from the Japanese tsunami washing up on our west coast shores within the next year or so. Last week an unmanned ship identified as a Japanese fishing vessel was spotted about 150 miles offshore from Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands). The Japanese government estimates that roughly 5 million tons of debris swept into the ocean, 70% of which sank. Over a million tons is still out there, along with all the other millions of tons of human trash dumped in the oceans every year.

Japanese ghost ship spotted off Haida Gwaii

I was out raking the lawn in the front garden the other day and stopped to talk to a passing neighbor. She looked at our huge red cedar and commented that this type of tree was "messy". She's the same neighbor who recently chopped down over 20 huge trees on their property next door (Hugging Trees), including a most beautiful giant I called the "Moonlight Tree", for the wonderful sight from our backyard of full moon rising behind it.

"So are humans", I replied.