Hitting Pause
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
2020, Junior, Creative Writing
A single quiet net dances through the misty green. Shafts of light penetrate the hazy fluid and catch on its perfect frays. This fragile web waltzes, boldly waltzes, with the unending ocean. Above, it is roaring fury and pouring rain. A little sailboat struggles through the ravenous waves, at the mercy of the exploding heavens and the swelling sea. But below there is only the ineffable dance, set to a symphony of soft bubbles.
For a moment, in this world of contrasts, everything is perfect. Then the lovely net swoops down, hungry as the current, and swallows a passing seal.
I will not describe the confusion in the seal’s eyes, or the blood that follows in the water, or the cruel lacerations that deepen as her struggle intensifies. I will not bore you with the details of the storm, or with the fate of the lonely boat, or with a count of the plastic ghosts that will be revealed on the shores the next day. Most of all, I will not examine the seal’s rasping breaths as she drags her useless, dying body onto a shore thick with plastic and jagged metal and other death traps.
Because her death is only a statistic.
136,000 seals, whales, dolphins, and turtles die like this every year. First the confusion, then the hot, all-consuming panic, then the lonely death.
The year is 2020, and we have known about marine pollution for about four decades. After the exhilarating technicolor future of the fifties faded away, human attention was turned to what had been quietly slipping out of the incredible factories. Ever since, marine pollution has been an issue of much disagreement.
There are the activists—inexhaustible protesters who march in the streets, wielding beautiful signs demanding the right to a habitable planet. There are the hot-headed deniers—those who will fight vehemently against such ridiculous ideas.
And then there are the bystanders, those who dismiss leaders as seeking eternal profits and the protesters as outrageous. This third group is insidiously dangerous. It consists of the people who condemn seal-killers and oil-spillers, while quietly sipping drinks from plastic straws.
So, in the year that our story unfolds, there are spreading oil spills and swaying ghost nets and bobbing plastic bottles, mourning humpbacks and morning murk and whirling hurricanes. There are shocking policies and clever campaigns and parasitic blooms. There is unbelievable progress and unbelievable denial.
Out of it all, the fighters rise, armed with the facts, gaining support. Their voices rise with their numbers. At last, for once in our self-obsessed lives, we are at the verge of making a real change. We are saving the planet we nearly killed.
Then suddenly everything stops short.
We are confined to our homes as a virus wreaks havoc on our species. The coronavirus pandemic turns our world upside-down, possibly forever. Economic and social impacts aside, it means humans are safely locked behind doors, where we can’t do much harm.
In the meantime, marine life savors the calm. Leatherback turtles return, hesitant, to beaches that are free of tourists. On picturesque Thailand beaches, the tranquil silence is interrupted only by the rushing swath of the waves—and the number of leatherback nests is at the highest it been for two decades. Chesapeake Bay’s horseshoe crab population is stabilizing, now that they aren’t being hunted for their blue blood. An entire generation of humpback whales that has never known a quiet ocean revels in the sudden, blessed silence. Humpbacks, among other species, can finally hear themselves think in the absence of the usual human noise. They are having long, bellowing conversations.
Isn’t that simply breathtaking? If human absence can cause the oceans to recover so magnificently, what can a dedicated, united human race do for the future of our oceans?
Our oceans. Because, as marine life has reminded us over the past few months, we share them with every organism on this perfect planet.
The pandemic has undoubtedly been devastating. But in one way, it has been a miracle. We’ve hit pause. This is a chance to stop for a moment, and to reflect on this beautiful, slowly healing planet we live on. It is a chance to hope, and to change. As we emerge from this uncertain world into a new era, it will be with different eyes. We will not take the oceans for granted anymore.
The seal won’t be just a statistic anymore.
It’s time to save the world.
Works Cited
Degnarain, N. (2020, June 12). Six Places Where Oceans, Rivers And Marine Life Have Rebounded During The Coronavirus Pandemic. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/nishandegnarain/2020/05/16/six-places-where-oceans-rivers-and-marine-life-have-rebounded-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic/#4ae3f1ed3fb0 McVeigh, K. (2020, April 27).
Silence is golden for whales as lockdown reduces ocean noise. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/27/silence-is-golden-for-whales-as-lockdown-reduces-ocean-noise-coronavirus National Geographic Society. (2019, June 27).
Marine Pollution. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/marine-pollution/
To stop the deaths of countless marine animals, we need to tag fishing gear. (2018, July 9). Retrieved from https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/news/stop-deaths-countless-marine-animals-we-need-tag-fishing-gear
Reflection
Reflection
When I started writing this piece, I didn’t know what to be hopeful about. Everywhere I looked, I saw how desensitized we have become to the suffering of marine life. I opened my piece with an unhappy scenario: a seal dies, tangled in a fishing net, while a severe storm forces hordes of plastic ashore. I wrote this because I wanted to make the statistics hurt. Because when we are hurt, we change. Then I read an article about an unlikely effect of worldwide lockdowns: whales are having long conversations with each other now that the oceans are quiet. I was stunned by the fact that simply reducing shipping could have this incredible effect. I did some further research and found out that it isn’t just humpbacks, either. Oceans and rivers around the world are healing in our absence. I found this an inspiring reminder that saving the oceans isn’t some faraway, unattainable ideal. Change is real and very possible. The pandemic has forced us to "hit pause" on our lives, and that isn’t necessarily all bad. We have the chance of a lifetime before us to radically change the way we live and work. The chance to do right by our oceans. This dark cloud has a silver lining. That, to me, is incredibly hopeful.