What Are The Choices For Dylan? #PlanetorPlastic

What Are The Choices For Dylan

Dylan spent all his life swimming. And when he said his life, he meant two human years. A fish swam casually across him, forcing him to take an urgent brake. Seriously, he thought, the water is no longer as clear as it used to be but these fish swim like they own the goddamn ocean. A part of him was always envious to the fish and other sea creatures. They swam so effortlessly with their fins or like McGuire the old turtle with his giant legs.

Dylan, as a normal seahorse, had neither fin or leg, only a tail. It was fine when he was born but the sea traffic has been getting worse these day and it wasn't because of the overpopulated schools of fish. Dylan's journey around the sea was often obstructed by the objects coming from the land. When he first encountered a bottle, he found a little clown fish stuck inside of it, his eyes swollen in pure terror. Dylan thought of the plastic bottle as another fish, a rare transparent kind that eats smaller fish. Stay away from them, warned McGuire, that thing killed my uncle a few years ago. It turned out that a bottle cap, the small circular piece of plastic that usually went with the bottle got into his nostril. Poor old Ferdinand passed away in agony.

Avoiding those plastic pieces was getting harder when they were literally everywhere. Seahorses were never the best swimmers; Dylan was, by no means, an exception. He, just as any of his kind, would cling on a floating object in the sea whenever the current arrived. He always avoided human's garbage though. Those things are nothing but poison to sea creatures. He would, instead, always look for a dead, detached piece of coral or a random pebble. Unfortunately, a current was coming and he still couldn't find anything to grab on.

That was when he saw it, a pinkish stick with white ends floating amidst the ocean, as tall as him. It wasn't vegetation or fish. No, definitely plastic, he thought. He jogged his memory to the short lecture old McGuire gave him a year ago about different type of human garbage. Not a bottle, not a can nor a plastic bag. After filtering his knowledge, Dylan recognized it as a cotton swab. A piece of plastic with cotton tips that humans used to clean their ears, said the turtle.

The water pressure changed. The current was nearing fast. Dylan suddenly remembered that he hadn't found anything to ride the tide yet. He was left with no choice but to twist his tail around the stick. For the first time, he felt the texture of plastic: cold and smooth, unnatural in nature. What it is doing here, he wondered, painfully aware of the hazards that small object could bring about. He grabbed onto it still, grabbed so tightly and only let go when the tide passed. What are the choices for Dylan anyway?