A Photographer's Regret

Biodiversity
Environmental and Science Education
Miscellaneous


A couple of days ago I posted 13 images that were finalists in the Wildlife Photographer of the Year (Natural History Museum, London). 

One of them is of a teeny-tiny seahorse attached to a Q-tip. The very thought still makes me squirm and my skin crawl.

Washington Post reporter Lindsey Bever talked with the photographer, Justin Hofman, Monterey, California. He took the photograph "off the coast of Sumbawa, an Indonesian island in the Lesser Sunda Islands chain." 

Hofman told Bever that his "blood was boiling" when he watched the creature on its journey through the litter and trash. Hofman said that he "wishes the picture 'didn't exist'--but it does and now he said, he feels responsible 'to make sure it gets to as many eyes as possible.'" ... He wants "everybody to see it and everybody to have a reaction to it."

My reaction: Ugh +.  It is sickening and powerful.

Indonesia dumps "3.22 million metric tons of plastic debris per year" (3549442 US tons). It is second in the world in producing marine pollution.

You may read Linsey Bever's essay here.