The invasiveness and the all-pervading destruction of the human is made shockingly apparent in finding a plastic object, perhaps a plastic bag, at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, which at 10,928 metres down is the deepest part of all the oceans on the planet.
And the man who got there and saw it is a guy called Victor Vescovo, a man who made his millions as a hedge fund manager/owner and who retired early to enter into a series of record-breaking challenges one of which was to go down to the deepest point of the planet’s oceans. He built a submersible called The Limiting Factor to take him to the ocean floor. He spent millions on the project and he went down alone. He said that he wasn’t nervous.
“It was an exciting moment, I have to confess,”
Victor Vescovo
As he scanned the ocean floor with the lights of his submersible craft, which withstood the equivalent weight of three aircraft carriers, he discovered that although he was the first person to reach this remotest of remote places a human-made object had got there before him. It was a piece of human detritus. There was some sort of lettering on it and it lay on the seabed. He couldn’t retrieve it but photographed it. It appeared to be made of plastic – some sort of bag or packaging.
In a previous dive Victor had captured a picture of a plastic bag at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.
“Unfortunately, the presence of man finds his way even to these extraordinarily remote places”.
Victor Vescovo
The story reinforces our knowledge, nowadays, that plastic in various forms and from various man-made objects ranging from clothing to washing materials, has permeated every part of the oceans. What was once crystal clear water is now heavily polluted by humankind’s rampant commercialism and the species that swim therein are suffering. I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures. One whale’s gut was totally clogged with plastic bags to the point where the animal could no longer sustain its life. A seal was strangled by a ‘frisbee’.
This truly is about the animal-to-human relationship. It can be a very destructive relationship from the point of the animal. It’s time to change.
