Our seas are dying. 90% of the world’s fisheries are over-harvested and in decline. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to be between 700,000 to 15,000,000 square kilometres.
The scale of this tragedy is beyond our comprehension so we take no action; nothing happens, fish disappear, waste accumulates and the seas silently die. Actually things do happen. In March 2011, Barry O’Farrell’s Coalition government was elected and one of its firs acts was to pass legislation “to ban the creation of new marine parks and extensions to marine sanctuaries for five years.” T. Flannery, After the Future (2012, issue 48, Quarterly Essay, Schwartz Media).
To draw attention to marine extinction, in 2012, I photographed harbour rubbish floating past a derelict jetty at an abandoned marina in Sydney Harbour. The rubbish could be still born life, a sorry replacement fort he marine species whose absence they filled.
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