Re-thinking plastic

The first few days out of Oahu, once we lost sight of land, it was just pure, uninterrupted water. In fact the first piece of flotsam we saw was enough of a novelty to stop the boat to investigate. It was nothing much, just a large light bulb and a piece of floating plastic that had been floating so long it had cultivated its own ecosystem of marine life. Since then, the flotsam has become more and more frequent. It's rare now, even out here in the middle of nowhere, that we go for more than an hour without passing within sight of some floating piece of debris, nearly all of it plastic. The stuff floats, apparently forever: milk crates, bottles, fishing floats, all sorts of junk--and takes an eternity to break down. It's disturbing.

-Jared