Sandy Bay, Northland, New Zealand. Image: Su Leslie 2019.
The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it?” – Jules Verne
Beyond the headland, the Pacific Ocean.
A summer day, when the sea is calm and the water clear, bodysurfers catch gentle waves and kids play in the shallows. On such a day it is easy to imagine that the vastness of the world’s largest ocean can absorb all the plastic and garbage and toxic marine-life-killing pollution we humans feed it, and that all our shit will somehow be absorbed and disappear.
Easy — and potentially fatal.
Posted to the weekly quotation-based challenge hosted by Debbie at Travel with Intent.
Zimmerbitch 
You’re right Su, beauty can be misleading in many ways.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The right kind of warning that we all should take seriously. Su!
LikeLiked by 1 person
So sad and so frightening to see those islands of floating plastic out in the ocean—-or to walk the beach and find plastic bags and bottles and trash on the beach.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Agreed. This particular beach was surprisingly free of litter, but I suspect it is something of a “locals’ beach” and people take better care.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a fantastic photo Su, I wish I were there. It is most distressing to think of what we are doing to such great beauty in the world.
Leslie
LikeLiked by 1 person
I agree Leslie.
LikeLiked by 1 person
🙂
LikeLike
absolutely – pollution of our waterways is something we must not ignore
LikeLike
Definitely fatal to believe that, especially when people keep eating so many fish and polluting themselves in the process.
Love the Jules Verne quote, he was a brilliant author and one of favourites when I was a kid. 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
Me too; I loved Around the World in 80 Days best.
I eat a lot less fish now; partly because of over-fishing but also because I worry about how toxic the flesh may have become.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That was always my favorite too!! 😀
I think these are good reasons to eat less fish, although I´ve recently read that sardines are a good choice in both respects – they reproduce really fast and as they are somewhat low on the food chain they´re also less polluted. Just had some with a lovely salad and homebaked sourdough bread yesterday – yummy! 😀
LikeLike
I cannot tell about the other countries, but I know that here in Ireland the raw sewage goes straight to the rivers and then to the ocean. Just yesterday I witnessed something very sad. I walked along the local river with a housing estate on the other side. Obviously, someone was having a laundry day as the white stream joined the river. A rat was trying to escape the stream, swimming as fast as he could, with his eyes bulging from the effort. Even the rat knew the danger.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That is horrible. We have major issues with our infrastructure not coping with all the new developments that are taking place (and destroying farmland and habitats in the process). Heavy rains here lead to beaches being declared unsafe, and our rivers are an absolute disgrace, mainly from agricultural chemicals and animal waste.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sad to hear this. I wonder if there is a clean river anywhere in the world. Polluting the water is the most insane thing humanity could do.
LikeLiked by 1 person
It certainly is.
LikeLiked by 1 person