ENGULFED
Rachel Deane
Seventy one percent of the Earth’s surface belongs me.
Humanitarians have abused their power and through plastic polluting they have caused
extinction of the animals that live in my depths; not to mention they have induced climate
change and my rising sea levels.
Do they not know or care that I provide a living for them, food for them. I govern their
weather and keep their air clean, but they still dare to insult me weekly, daily and by the
minute. Humans have taken me for granted for far too long.
It amazed me that a human could be so beautiful yet so harmful. Her blood red gown had
death seething all over it as she drifted past the swarm of Jellyfish, or were they plastic
bags? We cannot tell the difference nowadays.
So how selfishly unjust was it to expect me to keep her alive when her kind had made an
absolute mockery of me! Did she expect to enter my waters and feel none of the pain
my creatures endure.
Fifteen of my ocean animals have become extinct because of you, Turtles consuming
plastic bags mistaken for Jellyfish; around 6% of all my turtles are found entangled in
your debris each year, around 90% of them already dead and those that aren’t are
suffering from sores or sepsis.
Then there are your boats and ships, bigger, taller and faster each year, pumping their hazardous waste and sewage into me. Your fishing trawlers discarding of their unwanted nets overboard.
The musky, thick, worn discarded net entangled her pale blue body; she flew with the swirls of my waves. She reaped no mercy from the depths of the ocean. As she struggled trying to untangle herself, tugging in despair; she was forced to look into the reflection of Humankinds careless waste disposal.
The rage I had felt rising inside me, like a storm fed by all of the toxic substances and rubbish you have carelessly polluted into me, calmed. This includes about 14 million tonnes of trash each year, of which between 5 and 12 million tonnes is plastic waste that will take over 400 years to break down.
There was no need to seek the very revenge I had been waiting for, she was already subject to the most grave consequence of Humans actions; death.
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She began to sink, my waters just entered more through her red lips each time she tried to open her mouth. I could see the fear in her eyes. Ironically, she mirrored my creatures when they too had been summoned to death by the Humans.
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She started to turn paler, becoming weaker and less resistant to her fate. She had lost the battle, exhaling her last breath.
She began to float so elegantly, as if she and her kind would never harm a thing. Her soft whispered gasp was the last
noise to co-exist with the noise of my underwater current until it eventually faded out. Engulfing her.
The consequences I describe are already happening without my help. The toxic chemicals that leach out of your plastic are already found in the blood and tissue of nearly all of you. Exposure to them is already linked to cancers, birth defects, impaired immunity and all those other ailments that flow from that.
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The pollution in your air is already affecting every organ and virtually every cell in your bodies. Around seven million of you are dying from your toxic air already every year and if this continues who knows what lies in store for you.
Do you know what the most ironic part of all this is? Humans are not only killing me, they are also killing themselves.
Thank you to Better: the Eltham Centre for the use of the swimming pool.
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