Excerpted from BBC News: "Diary from the Middle of Nowhere"
Our environment correspondent David Shukman is on the remote Pacific island of Midway to report on the threat of plastic rubbish drifting in the ocean. Plastic debris collects around the island, scene of a seminal World War II battle, with serious consequences for its wildlife. David will be reporting on the issue this week for the BBC website, radio and TV.
Anyone missing this little toy, some kind of futuristic space warrior? I found it on a beach during a clean-up operation.
It has a lot of miles under its belt - it must have travelled across a great tract of the Pacific Ocean to get here.
How do I know? Well, for one thing there are no children on Midway and haven't been for years.
Also, it was buried amid a vast tangle of fishing nets, bottles, computers, crates and baskets, all of which had drifted here on one of the world's great ocean currents, the North Pacific Gyre.
Like something out of the film Toy Story, this little figure must have spent months at sea, surviving storms and maybe even being swallowed by an albatross and fed to a chick that then died.
Who knows? Maybe a child dropped it overboard during a holiday cruise. Or it was chucked into the rubbish and somehow got swept into the sea.
Maybe a household in Japan or California was having a spring-clean and, with the children growing up, the toys were no longer wanted.
Thanks Darky and Paul for surfacing this interesting article!!!
1 comment:
Seeing that T-28 makes me want to do a custom series of "Lost at Sea" toys. Just think about some RealxHead or Blobpus figures done up to look like they had just washed ashore after years of drifting. That would be sweet.
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