I had the pleasure of meeting a doctorate student on my flight on the way home from St Lucia to Canada recently, as my long term vacation had ended. She is a marine biologist and was studying whales off the coast of St. Lucia. I was surprised and delighted to know how many species there are living in the Caribbean ocean close to this island.
Our conversation quickly turned to the amount of plastic waste that is floating in the areas surrounding the island, and how this disintegrating mess is finding its way into the fish population as well as the larger ocean living mammals.
I spoke to this young woman about the positive changes I have seen this past year in that many schools and churches have begun volunteer projects to pick up roadside waste and place it into bags and containers for recycling. The abolishing of free grocery bags, and the quest to abolish the “clam shell” Styrofoam containers all help to curtail this garbage from ending up in the ocean currents.
For as we know… everything that is thrown out and finds itself in the sea, will ultimately be absorbed into the bodies of fish and oceanic life and end up inside us as cancerous carcinogenic poisons.
Marion Fralick Bartlett
Ontario, Canada