Because of humans

"One more" I said when I came back and threw the scrap I had found on the pile. The pile we started this morning, I remembered, sighing when I saw the size of it now.

"It's terrible" Scandos replied "we find more and more of them every tide."

I believed him. He was the one in charge of the registration of all the objects we found and brought back to the dump, the biggest on this side of the ocean. But unfortunately, not the only one. I swam in the direction of the city, looking for a solution. But what could a young seahorse do against that ? What could our city of smallfish do ? Smallsea was composed of only the smallest fish in the ocean, like starfish, sardines, mackerels and seahorses. We were experiencing first-hand the indifference of humans. They were too blind to see what they were doing to the oceans.

Everyone in Smallsea hated them. Mostly because they were responsible for the disappearance of a fourth of our population and the death of half. How ? By contaminating the sea, they created deadly diseases for us. I heard little time ago that even for them they were dangerous, so I kept asking myself: why did they continue ? Here, every fish had lost at least one person close to them, a friend or someone from his family. I was no exception.

Both my parents had been killed when I was still a baby. They had been caught by some kind of dead jellyfish without a filament. One of their friends who was with them when it happened told me it was translucid. And that there were many of them in the oceans. So, I became an orphan when I was only one month old.

We did the best we could for the inhabitants of the town. We told scary stories to children to prevent them from leaving the security of the city or going to the dump. We told them the truth only when they were four months old, when they had to decide what they wanted to do with their lives. They could either choose a "normal" job in the city, or help to clean the oceans. That's what I chose. I've done that for two months, and I've seen more horrors in that time than in the rest of my life. In this job, we also had to help other cities if they were invaded by scraps. You can't imagine how horrible it is.

Suddently, an alarm rang. I froze.

It was the worse one. The one I hoped I would never hear. I swam faster to Smallcity, but when I arrived in the main street, I only saw parents taking their children in their arms to protect them while a huge black wave grew bigger in the horizon.

An oil slick. At that very moment, I understood that we were all going to die.

And I felt lonely.

Because of humans.