Saving the ocean

Sherman & His Habitat

By Keanan

This is Sherman.

He is a shark.

He lives in the ocean. It is his habitat. It is his home.

But one day he was surprised.

He saw something floating to the bottom.

It was a treasure chest.

And lots of plastic came with it.

So then he decided to eat it. It felt bad.

Did you know 1 in 4 fish have plastic in them.

The problem is that when fishermen catch fish – then we eat it. We end up eating the plastic.

It’s not good for our health or Sherman’s health.

I want people not to throw plastic in the sea.

This poem, video and art came about because Keanan was lucky enough to spend time with Jim Toomey a few months ago. Jim, for those who don’t know, is the creator of Sherman the shark and avid campaigner to save our oceans. You can see that his passion for the ocean rubbed off on Keanan. Along with infringing all copyright issues and reproducing his own Sherman, Keanan chose the ocean as the habitat he wanted to research for a school project. Hope you don’t mind Jim! This is what evolved:

A video (apologies for my shoddy camerawork), a script – above – that I believe brings the most pertinent points (that many adults fail to grasp) to life, that are further expanded in Keanan’s poem.

I wish I’d been able to record his rap version of it – alas Keanan won’t oblige.

Meeting Jim has enriched my life and Keanan’s well beyond the time spent in his company. Thank you Jim Toomey.

Like him, we really care about what goes into our oceans, and into the creatures we eat. We hope you do too.

When you read that we’re dumping the equivalent of the contents on one garbage truck into the ocean every minute, we hope you realise how serious this problem is. Do you want to eat plastic? Or fish. Right now you’re eating both. And the problem is getting worse – predictions are that, by 2050, there’ll be more plastic than fish in the sea. Scary thought. What are you doing about saving our oceans, our fish and ourselves?