June 7, 2018
Zone of Shame
I’ve been living in Australia for a while now. Obviously, it’s impossible to not compare one region with the other.
There are so many differences: the seabed, the coast, the people, culture, food…Unfortunately, we found a sad similarity today, something that all seabeds share. Ever since I joined Oceana in 2010, the only thing that all human beings have in common is our lack of responsibility, that idea that if we throw something into the sea it disappears, when in reality it never really goes away, even if it disappears for a few weeks or months; sooner or later it ends up in the stomachs of animals that confuse garbage with food, or the waves wash it to shore, or it’s trapped on the seabed for a long time. Plastic rivers lie on the bottom of the sea, plastic that no one sees but nonetheless remains. The ROV has shown us the “zone of shame” today, the one that ties your stomach up in knots, and while it sometimes seems that only illegal or irresponsible fishing or merchants are responsible for the destruction, it’s also the fault of regular people, those who have nothing to do with the big industries, and we’re responsible for ensuring that our garbage ends up where it should by managing our waste responsibly. We especially can’t turn our backs on the ocean, not only because it feeds us, but also because we belong to it. We talk about Mother Earth, but let’s not forget that it was the ocean that gave earth life.