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mammals, who meet the same fate on
land. What chance would a little fi nless
porpoise have against plastics and
microplastics (the latter can be smaller
than microbeads in a lush facewash, but
can be sticky and toxic) with impacts
deadly to the sea? While it appears the
sea stretches forever, our waste has
created dead zones, eff ectively making
it (ecologically) smaller, less of a
cradle of life, and infi nitely less of
a wilderness.The sea is telling us that the
time to change is now. Starting from
where we throw our empty packet
of milk, to how we hold our
municipalities accountable, how we
refuse non-essential plastics, and
fi nally, how we metaphorically and
managerially scale the garish creations
of our making – mountains of garbage,
underwater and over. Mountains
that need management and reduction,
and not endless burials at sea. The sources of trash are many–
rivers that become receptacles of our
waste, pouring out to sea; ships that
throw waste overboard; the fi shing
industry that dumps fi shing gear, nets
and refuse into the waters that are
their life. Plastic fl oats on the water,
cutting light, other waste material
such as glass and metal settles at
benthic levels. There are many fl oating
garbage patches, stretching for miles
on end, in the Pacifi c, Caribbean and
other places. How does one even
begin to gauge the damage? We can
estimate miles of fl oating garbage –
but how do we calculate how many
tonnes of debris has sunk to the
bottom of the ocean, making even
reef walks a nightmare?
In India, an immediate challenge
is waste management. With some of
the dirtiest rivers in the world, our
solid waste contribution to the sea
is signifi cant. States are currently
working on coastal management plans,
which have been pending for years
since the Coastal Regulation Zone
notifi cation was issued in 2011 under
the Environment (Protection) Act,
- Environmentalists stress that
authenticated maps of the coasts
have not been shared with the public,
possibly not even accurately created.
Coastal management plans need to
involve and empower local communities
- and urgently build in working waste
management plans. That would just
be one step towards preventing our
dirtiest wastes from being dumped into
the world’s last wilderness.
That day, in between long stretches
of the sea’s silence, I dreamt of dolphins.
Schools of happy dolphins, romping
away from the trash and careless milk
packets. And indeed, I saw something.
It looked like a dorsal fi n. I wondered
if I’d be lucky enough to see a healthy
marine mammal. Marine mammal it
was – but not a dolphin. It was a fi nless
porpoise, vulnerable as per the IUCN,
and it was very dead. In death, it had
turned over the side, and its fl ipper
looked like a dorsal fi n. The stench
of the dead animal fi lled my nostrils,
its face etching itself forever into my
memory. Did it die through the internal
slow burn of plastic waste? Whales, the
world’s largest mammals, are doubtless
dying because of plastic in their bellies - as are elephants, the largest terrestrial
NEHA SINHAJEDIMENTAT44/CC BY 2.0/FLICKRPlastic waste overwhelmingly dominates the composition of marine debris and is clearly taking a
toll on species such as this dolphin (top) and dead fi nless porpoise (bottom).