My project exposes the issue of global shipping, specifically container ship spills. This image is the establishing shot. I used a wide-angle converter on the Canon G9x to get a split-level photograph of life beneath the water.
I took this image with my DIY home studio, using two poster boards and a speed light flash. It shows the massive number of bottles I found on Castle Beach, Falmouth. I spread them randomly to give the effect that they were just dumped.
I stacked them on each other to form a structure resembling a mountain of plastic. By making it into a metaphorical mountain, it represents the scale of the issue. Five hundred eighty shipping containers went missing from the spill, which is thought to have come from.
I also found the straws and caps that would have been attached to the bottles. The straws cause many problems to marine life, as many marine animals mistake them for food. It also shows that the bottles are empty, and chemicals from inside them have leaked into the sea.
This shows the ageing of plastic pollution. These bottles are thought to have come from a shipping container leak 10 years ago and have just resurfaced, showing that the plastic bottles will break down and form microplastics in the ocean.
I found a dead Gannet, and it likely did not die from ingesting plastic. However, I discovered plastic bottles scattered around it, illustrating the consequences of our ongoing mass consumption. It's a sad sight to see such a magnificent bird lying dead with plastic surrounding it.
