There’s plenty of more fish in the sea right? You know what else there is?? RUBBISH.
Visiting Lombok this past week to meet with local universities and partnering organisations for our upcoming conservation spectacular: SORCE, it would be rude not to have a quick dive or two… or three. Initially it appeared that each and every one of the marine variety was out to greet us; Sharks, turtles, Eagle rays, pygmy seahorses, ornate ghost pipefish, robust pipefish, cuttlefish, hairy octopus, to name just a few, but this is simply the everyday of the stunning underwater world that graces the shores of this Southern Indonesian island. The abundance of life made it difficult to believe, on the outset, that Indonesia is the world’s second biggest plastic polluter. But then I began to notice the occasional diaper lying on the seabed; the plastic bottles nestling amongst the corals. Though not necessarily as shocking as images of the Citarum river in West Java or the recently captured underwater plastic storm in Bali, witnessing a thriving ecosystem in what seems to be the early stages of a plastic invasion, seems an ominous threat of what is to come and of what we have to lose if we don’t act.