Ocean Pollution Is Cruel, Not Cool: The Impacts of COVID-19 On Marine Life

By Asha Kannan

I see a flash of silver in the distance and propel myself through the water. My stomach is rumbling. Now that I’m no longer a hatchling, I have to fight for my own food in the ocean. I can see the jellyfish desperately trying to swim away from me, but I am too hungry to let it slip away. I chase it through the rocky caves just beneath the water’s surface, when it suddenly stops. The jellyfish is so close to me, but it looks like it has been snagged on a rock. Well, I guess it will be easier for me to eat. As I get closer, something looks fishy about this jellyfish, but I am way too hungry to just let free food pass me by, so I quickly gobble the clear, gelatinous bubble. I try to swallow and right away, I realize that it doesn’t taste quite right.

I try to chew, but my mouth catches on something I assume are tentacles. I realize I am wrong. I try to push this strange, rope-like substance called food down my throat, but I can feel myself starting to lose air. I attempt to pull the jellyfish out of my mouth but am only partly successful: the contents of the “jellyfish” fall down my throat and I pull out the remains of a plastic bag filled with assorted face masks and gloves.

I’ve never seen a jellyfish with these kinds of insides before. My mother warned me about how the humans who live on the mainland like to fill plastic bags with other plastic items and drop them into our home, but she never said anything about the bags being filled with gloves and masks. It must be a new season above the water. This is unfortunately not the first time I’ve almost died from trying to eat. My brother told me that every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean every year, and some of this waste has ended up in my stomach before.

When climbing on shore one day, a little girl yelled, “Mommy, it’s a turtle, come look!” I was immediately photographed and petted. The humans on the beach were all wearing “masks,” as they called them. The masks were exactly like the ones I found in my jellyfish today. The little girl then began to complain that her mask was itchy. Her mother replied with something like “it’s just until the end of this pandemic.” What does pandemic mean? I’m not so sure. All I know is that I want a real meal, not a plastic jellyfish.

Sources:

• https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-briefs/marine-plastics#:~:text=At%20least%208%20million%20tons,causes%20severe%20injuries%20and%20deaths.

Written by Asha Kannan