Bernews: September 10, 2016

The National Geographic’s Short Film Showcase recently featured “A Plastic Sea” short film by Justin Lewis and Michelle Stauffer, which was filmed in Bermuda and looks at the impact single-use plastics have on oceans and wildlife.

The film’s description said, “In the Sargasso Sea and around Bermuda, fragments from the breakdown of plastics, especially single-use plastics, are accumulating in sea life, and we are all responsible.

“The impact of plastic and its impact in the oceans is gaining increasing attention, and this film succinctly presents the problems—and hints at a solution to reversing some of them.”

In an interview with the National Geographic, the filmmakers said, “Prior to beginning this project, we had several of the same misconceptions about the garbage patches that many people still have today.

“When you think of a garbage patch, you envision something with considerable mass, like a densely packed island of large plastic objects. In reality it’s worse. There are millions of pieces of micro-plastic that float on the top two to three meters of the ocean’s surface that span across every major ocean on the planet.

“During early morning shoots, we would watch plastic wash up along Bermuda’s shoreline, covered in algae with fish bites taken out of it, indicating that the plastic had been swirling in the ocean’s currents for decades.

“Witnessing the volume of trash we saw wash up on the shores during our short stay in Bermuda left a big impact on us as we imagined that this is happening in many beaches all over the world.

“The objective of the film was to create awareness about the rapidly growing issue of plastic pollution and to inspire people to make small changes to their lifestyle that can have an impact on the problem,” they added.

“By refusing single-use plastics whenever possible, we are each making a choice to reduce the amount of waste we produce and work together to preserve our planet for generations to come.