If that continues then I'm sure a growing swell of dolphins and orcas will arrive in port one sunny afternoon and ask (through an interpreter of course) if we could build another Marineland as it would be safer to live there.
I have doubts that things will ever change markedly on the nautical plastic pollution front because it's kind of like driving skills.
It was only a couple of years ago that there was a serious push in the direction of making getting a driver's license much more challenging ... because driving standards were basically pretty poor.
But it's a case of damage done ... those drivers who never got the message, never took aboard the broad spread of driving competency, will be on the roads for decades to come and nothing can change that.
Just like all the plastic (unable to break down) already in the oceans.
And hey, humankind has used the ocean to dump anything and everything since we gutted the first woolly mammoth.
And the land for that matter.
Here's another frown-inducing figure.
On the entire global front we generate 2.2 billion tonnes of waste.
Crikey, I hope I was doing the right thing when I buried old Budgie Boy before Christmas - our old budgie who saw it through about 14 years.
However, when I was growing up (a task I am seeking to accomplish by September 2018) the folk within our seafront neighbourhood were recycling pioneers.
Although it was more commonly called "feeding the birds".
After tea-time, usually around 6.30 or so, you'd wander over to the beach with the pot of leftovers and the seagulls would be circling like ravenous vultures.
To your left there would be the old lady from four doors down and to your right was the kid with the silly haircut from six doors down.
And across the seafront landscape beyond them would likely be another dozen or so people.
All bearing pots.
All were "feeding the birds".
It was a tradition.
It was just one of those things someone in the family was tasked to do after mealtime.
Virtually no unwanted old food or meal scraps went into the rubbish bin which would be collected weekly by the rubbish men who would hoist the great tin over the truck's tray edge and shake whatever was in it loose.
No plastic liner bags then.
So I suppose, in hindsight, we were effectively recycling, although just what products the seagulls would accordingly produce from the waste we had left them to recycle is really not worth thinking about.
Back then though (we are talking about days when only one house in 100 had a television set) there was no such thing as "recycling" as we now know it.
The only time you'd use that term was if you were explaining something to do with riding a bicycle.
And then there was the incinerator.
They were a traditional part of the backyard landscape back many decades passed and unwanted items would be gathered and placed within them, and the flame would be lit.
Yeah, bit of smoke but it didn't stick around, although on one occasion dad fired up the old incinerator (a retired old 45 gallon drum) and the old lady next door had her washing out.
She rolled out the hose, got up the stepladder, and let dad and the incinerator have it.
"I'll wait till she goes out," he quietly and slightly sheepishly said while seeking a towel.
And no one ever chucked any old bike or appliance out, without trying to fix it first.
If all else failed you'd just put it in the shed and one day call up the scrap metal chap and he'd come a get it.
Ahh and milk came in glass bottles and you'd "recycle" them by putting out the empties at the gate and milkman would deliver filled ones the next morning.
No plastic in sight.
And we are meant to be evolving?
Personally, I think we had things pretty right back in 1962.
