There are many many new schools in the ocean and they aren't full of fish. In fact, there are less fish and more plastic every day. We don't need school to tell us that we have to stop the growth of this insane plastic ocean. In case no one has noticed, you can't eat plastic. And it's actually killing the things we like to eat.
In early March, 2018, a diver called Rich Horner was in his usual manta ray cleaning station at Manta Point in Nusa Penida and didn't see many manta ray that day. Instead, there was a massive plastic slick along with the usual jellyfish, plankton, leaves, branches, fronds, sticks; came plastic bags, plastic bottles, plastic cups, plastic sheets, plastic buckets, plastic sachets, plastic straws, plastic baskets, plastic bags and more plastic bags. The video below of what he saw was posted on The Guardian and has quickly gone around the world.
Interestingly Horner says that much of the plastic in the stream was general plastic packaging - the kind that items you buy in supermarkets are wrapped in. In late 2017 Caroline Power posted a video and photos of a floating island of trash stretching over several miles between the idyllic islands of Roatan and Cayos Cochinos, in the Caribbean, that shocked the world. The tide of plastic comes through a couple of times a year and hangs around 15 miles off the coast. It is made up of all kinds of plastics and in her mind, it mostly comes into the sea from the nearby coastline via rivers, beach and general litter. Caroline says that the best thing people can do is to keep these photos in the back of their minds everytime they are tempted to buy bottled water, take a straw or use plastic cutlery. When you are at the beach, leave your plastic at home and always remember to Take 3 for the Sea - and never leave any of your own trash there. Because this is where it's headed.