David Attenborough on the scourge of the oceans: ‚I remember being told plastic doesn’t decay, it’s wonderful‘

His sequel to The Blue Planet will focus not only on the marvels of sea life but also the threats to it.
The naturalist explains why plastic pollution, climate change and overpopulation are problems too urgent to be left to ecologists

Fiona Harvey
Monday 25 September 2017 15.00 BST

David Attenborough vividly remembers, nearly 80 years on, his first
encounter with one of the worst scourges of the planet. He was a
schoolboy. “I remember my headmaster, who was also my science master,
saying: ‘Boys, we’ve entered a new era! We’ve entered, we’ll be proud to
say, the plastic era. And what is so wonderful about this is we’ve used
all our scientific ingenuity to make sure that it’s virtually
indestructible. It doesn’t decay, you know, it’s wonderful.’”

Attenborough lets the last word hang in the air, eyebrows and hands
raised. Then the hands fall. “Now we dump thousands of tonnes of it,
every year, into the sea, and it has catastrophic effects.”

Pieces of plastic in the ocean will soon outnumber fish. They have, in
the past few years, been recognised as one of the most pressing problems
we face. Fish eat the plastic debris, mistaking it for food, and can
choke or starve to death. The long-term effects are not yet understood,
but we do know that plastic microparticles are now found in drinking
water across the world, as well as throughout our oceans.

Plastics are the latest in a long line of concerns for the 91-year-old
naturalist. They are a key theme of his latest work for television, the
new series of The Blue Planet, which he will return to writing after our
interview. Premiering at the BFI Imax in London this Wednesday – with
Prince William as a special guest – the series will focus not only on
the marvels of ocean life, but the threats to it, of which plastic is
one of the worst. It will also deal with what people can do to help.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/sep/25/david-attenborough-on-the-scourge-of-the-oceans-i-remember-being-told-plastic-doesnt-decay-its-wonderful