Goodbye for now... and surfing entrepreneurs

Unfortunately, at least for now, it is time to bring my blog to a close. It has been something I have greatly enjoyed doing and I hope readers have learnt something new along the way, as I know I certainly have. I decided that I would like to end my blog by once again returning to the surfing entrepreneurs. In particular, Peter Ceglinski, the managing director of The Seabin Project. Whilst writing this blog I got in touch with him and was lucky enough to get a response. The question I decided to ask him was: "From your experience of being out at sea cleaning up ocean waste, how big do you think the problem is, and do you think we, as humans, are currently going in the right direction to reduce this problem or is far more action needed?" The answer I received was as follows…

“My personal belief is that we are in the exact position that we need to be in right now for a cleaner future. The problem we all have created is huge! The size of the problem is directly related with our limited understanding of plastics, our throw away culture and excessive consumer habits. Human nature seems to always go from one extreme to another as we learn from our mistakes, and right now I feel we are in a transitional period and are moving into the problem solving moment.

We all can do a lot to help also. From positive action like picking up litter from the streets, consuming less and reusing products again. There is a lot of groups doing ‘passive action’ by way of studying the problem, this helps us all learn in many ways, however we need positive action also, real hands on stuff... physically doing something.”

I was grateful for his response and I feel it touched upon much of what we have explored throughout this blog. It is very true that we have created a huge problem in the form of marine pollution, but it is not a problem too great to solve. Peter perhaps takes a more optimistic stance than others might, saying we are in the exact position we need to be in to enact a cleaner future, believing we are entering the ‘problem solving movement’. It remains the case that there is much to be done, but I do hope Peter is right in his assumptions, and I believe this blog has shown his opinion to be true at least to some degree.

For anyone following this blog, I thank you for your interest, with one particular question from a reader sticking out in the memory, pulling me up on the fact that it is “the (not our) sea”. I’ve stuck by what I thought was a catchy name for my blog, but it is absolutely correct that it is not ‘our’ sea, but that of the Earth, so we must do our best to take care of it. Hopefully now, in the coming weeks and months, we will start to see more positive updates regarding marine pollution. Goodbye for now and Merry Christmas.