The Last Straw

Angelo and Maria sat entwined on the warm sand, watching the sun’s last red gold streaks reflected on the gently swelling sea. It had been a wonderful day, but now it was time to go. They trudged regretfully up the beach, leaving behind them a water bottle, an empty sunscreen tube, a Fanta can and a plastic bag that still held the wrappers of their hamburgers. Night fell and a few shy hermit crabs scuttled about, but found nothing of interest. At about 5 am, the land breeze started up, ruffling the sea and sending the plastic bag cartwheeling, shedding its paper along the way. A strong gust lifted it into the air and it rolled and fluttered higher, heading far out to sea.

The bag touched down on the water, trapping a little air and trailing its handles, looking for all the world like a drifting jellyfish. This was unfortunate, because jellies are the staple diet of sea turtles, and a large female Green Turtle was now approaching. Her powerful flippers swept her forward and she lunged to snap down on the plastic bag, chomping it rhythmically. It did not disintegrate like a jellyfish, but lodged in her throat, one handle wrapping around her lower jaw. Turtles have a slow metabolism and of course they can go for up to half an hour without needing a gulp of air, so hers was a drawn out death as she struggled in vain to breathe. With her died a hundred or more fertile eggs that she was going to lay in the warm sands of Lampedusa, the last of her species to breed on the island.

A few gulls and predatory fish would go hungry without the annual feast of tiny turtles, but the main effect would not be evident until two or three years later. Fishermen on the island were always complaining that their catch was ‘not like back in the good old days’, but now they were becoming alarmed. There were still a few big fish to be caught – tuna and swordfish – but the schools of sardines, the mainstay by which they made a living, had dwindled to almost nothing. They all noticed that jellyfish were much more plentiful, from the tiny fluorescent comb jellies to the large golden brown ones with tentacles trailing a metre or more. They didn’t realise that the jellyfish population had spiralled out of control because of the absence of their only predator, the Green Turtle, and that jellyfish prey mainly upon the tiny fry of fish and crustaceans. So the situation continued to worsen each year, and the fishermen began to joke grimly that their wives would have to come up with recipes for jellyfish, or they would starve.

Over the next decade, all the fishing families moved on, to the mainland or further afield. Some joined the mega-trawling fleet that was mopping up the last of the Mediterranean’s tuna. The schools and the bank closed, then the general store and the café where the old men had sat and discussed politics each morning. Before long all that was left was a heap of derelict wooden boats and rotting nets. Only a tribe of large rats inhabited the waterfront – the cats had left with the fishermen.

After they had eaten all the rubbish, the rats turned to the island’s lizards and the eggs and chicks of birds. When these were all gone, they ate the vegetation. By the time the last rat starved to death, Lampedusa’s topsoil had eroded and blown way, leaving only the bare rock baking in the fierce sun. There were legends about the island, its once-fertile fields and teeming seas, but looking at the barren landscape, they were difficult to believe. Perhaps even more difficult to believe was that the last straw had been a discarded plastic bag.