I want to share with you some pics taken during a beach clean up on Tavolara island, two weekends ago. This is only some of the waste found, a full boat, but I have saved them as an example of tiny plastic garbage anyone can find at sea. The kind of waste that is a real threat for marine wildlife.
Some of them were a gift a really enthusiastic young girl gave me, understanding I was looking for these colourful little pieces. Giving me the bag, she told me that she had found some mermaids’s tears, too. I looked at her surprised and she explained to me that she had recently listened to a tale: mermaids cry when they look at all this litter humans leave in the sea. And telling me this, she showed me a handful of little plastic balls. I felt a sudden sadness recognizing that they were those little balls used by factories producing plastic items. Some years ago, during particularly severe weather, we found lots of them on the beaches, probably lost from a container ship. So, in the imagination of this girl, mermaids’s tears are turned into plastic when mixed with the sea water.
I think it’s a really sad thing to use a new tale to explain the presence of plastic in marine environment. The truth is that we are the only ones responsible for all this litter left behind. To comfort me, the beach clean up was a success and I felt the relief of sharing the day with a lot of really motivated people.
So, I will go on with my collection.
Sardinia Island 