The blue was a lie. From a distance, the Pacific still looked like the cradle of life, shimmering with the same sapphire intensity that had inspired poets for years. But as the boats dipped their bows into the swell, the truth surfaced in a choked, multicoloured sludge.

Mimi leaned over the railing, lowering the sampling net. When she hauled it back up, there were no silver scaled sardines. Instead, the mesh groaned under the weight of the millions of micro plastic pellets, jagged and toxic, mixed with the frayed remains of floating rope.

“It’s a soup” Mimi muttered, her voice swallowed by the salt spray.

She emptied the haul into a glass vat. Amongst the neon shards of bottle caps and weathered tooth brush bristles, something moved. A tiny sea turtle, no larger than a coin, was entangled in a six-pack ring that had tightened around its shell, warping its growth into a mangled figure eight.

Mimi reached in, her fingers steady despite the anger vibrating in her chest. With a pair of surgical snips, she clicked through the plastic. The turtle went still, then let out a sharp, rhythmic pulse of its flippers. It was a small victory in a losing war.

Looking out towards the horizon, Mimi saw the ‘Great Patch’, a floating continent of discarded vanity. We had treated the abyss like a basement, a place where things go to be forgotten. But the ocean doesn’t forget. It grinds our choices into dust and feeds them back to us, one fish, one salt grain, one breath at a time.

She released the turtle into a filtered holding tank. “Not today,” she whispered. The sun set, turning the water into liquid gold, masking the filth for a few brief hours. Then a letter swam by…