Plastic Poultry -- Off With Its Head

     Yeah, yeah, I'm a spoilsport. So what? I'd rather save real whales than fake ducks.

     The big-and-getting-bigger Duck-A-Thon did its bit in Huntington Beach over the weekend, dumping thousands of plastic rubber ducks off the pier -- first ones to the beach winning their sponsors a prize, and the rest going who-knows-where.

    It's for a very good cause -- a community clinic -- but not doing it is a very good cause, too. In our part of the Pacific Ocean, there's six times more plastic than plankton -- six times. Along the North Pacific shores, a hundred thousand sea mammals are killed every year from gobbling plastics that they thought were edible.

    The plastic poisoning of the oceans isn't getting better, and the once-amusing spectacle of tides full of yellow rubber ducks isn't helping. 

    We're a smart country -- if we can stamp out crackers shaped like goldfish, someone can come up with an edible, floating, ocean-friendly food substance and make it look like a duck. Because otherwise, in this case, if it looks like a duck and floats like a duck and quacks like a duck -- it's deadly.

-- Patt Morrison

Patt Morrison's column appears Thursdays in The Times.

Photo courtesy of Community Care Health Centers

Comments

[Mary Ellen]

Another example of Southern California PSEUDO-ENVIRONMENTALISM...when environmentalism is convenient here...then it's done...when it isn't it remains the same status quo.

[Amanda Wood]

I agree, Pat. THAT IS INSANE! Why weren't they slapped with some sort of dumping or littering fine? Or if this is annual, why hasn't a council person stepped forward to stop this ritual?

This is a perfect of example of people not thinking. Have fun today and worry about the planet tomorrow. What a disgrace.