None Of Them. #PlanetOrPlastic Writing Contest Entry 2018!

None of Them

I remember when I was a child, I used to go swimming in the oceans a lot. My parents would take me to a nearby but secluded coast in a country located in what used to be South East Asia; there, we would dive into the crystal clear water, whose waves lapped against the rosy pink sand of the coast.

I never wondered why they would take me there every week, I never questioned why they gazed wistfully at the water, nor did I ever wonder why my mother would shed a tear whenever she rose from the sea to go to dry land and why she always looked back.

One day, my dad brought home three pairs of goggles from work, my eager nine-year-old self desperate to try it out. When we went on our weekly trip, I was ecstatic to finally put it on and swim around, seeing the beautiful underwater even more clearly than before. For hours and hours, I swam, looking at the bright patterns of the fish that darted amongst the rocks. At the time, nothing made me happier than to be underwater in that undisturbed beach.

It was 5 o'clock and the sun was beginning to set, orange and pink brightening up the sky. I was taking another loop around the greying coral riddled rocks, not noticing the straws and plastic-bags in the crevices.

Then I saw it.

It was a little tiny creature, a weird yellow fish shaped like a squiggle with a curl at the end. It had fins on both sides and on its head. It swam happily towards me, its eyes glancing around my face, which must have been enormous in comparison. I followed it all around the coral, going back and forth, it's tiny fins propelling it forward.

I returned home that night curious about what the creature was, as I had lost sight of it only minutes after I spotted it. I asked my mom what it was, describing it in the most accurate detail a child could describe it as. With each word, her eyes grew incredulous, she gasped before running off to find my father as I recounted the final detail: "Its belly was big,".

We didn't go to that beach for several weeks after that, my young self not even noticing the number of cars whizzing past our small provincial home. Huge vans with a panda logo on them, trucks, carrying several boats, stamped with the words WSPA.

When my mom broke down crying, I comforted her, asked what was wrong. She told me that we weren't going to the beach anymore. I didn't understand why she cried then.

But I do now.

I'm staring down at the ruined earth from the ISS, watching grey clouds pass by. Our continents, weren't green like they were fifty years ago. The plastics shaped our oceans to extinction, our world turned uninhabitable. Only 214 species survived, humans are one of them.

None of them, seahorses.