Shiny

A fish's-eye view of the ocean

Filling the sea

To a fish, the ocean is made of light.

Light means food.

Fish hunt by sight and by smell. A glint in the water is usually something alive.

So it eats.

0 shiny things so far

There is always more.

Under the clouds, over the water, every surface sparkles.

Down here, everything glitters.

None of it was glass.

The towers are bottles. The clouds are carrier bags. The lights on the seabed are plastic pellets.

It ate 0 pieces of plastic.

Two in three marine fish species studied have eaten plastic. 210 of them are fish people catch to eat.1

It even smells like food.

Plastic adrift at sea grows a film of algae that gives off DMS, the scent of a meal. Anchovies hunt it like prey.23

Clear plastic looks like a jellyfish.

Sea turtles pick the debris that looks most like their prey. Swallowing 14 pieces gives a turtle a 50% chance of dying.45

11 million tonnes a year.

That is how much plastic reached rivers, lakes and the ocean in 2016. If nothing changes, it could be 29 million by 2040.6

A fish can't tell plastic from food. We can.

India releases more plastic pollution than any other country, about a fifth of the world's total, most of it waste that is never collected.7

There is still no global plastics treaty. Talks resume in 2027.8

Now undo it.

Fly free through the ocean. Every piece of plastic you touch turns back into light, and the dream grows back around it.

Fly free What you can do
0of 0 pieces turned back into light
0still inside the fish
Boost

W S up, down   A D turn   Shift boost   Q E roll   or drag to steer

Drag to steer. A second finger or the button boosts.

Paused

What you can do

  1. Join a coastal cleanupOcean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanup also logs every item, so your Saturday becomes data.
  2. Hunt for nurdlesSpend ten minutes counting plastic pellets on a beach and report what you find, even zero.
  3. Back a strong treatyUNEP's Clean Seas campaign tracks what countries have promised, and the treaty talks.
  4. In India, refuse and report19 single-use plastic items have been banned since 1 July 2022. Sellers can be reported on CPCB's SUP complaint app.9

Sources

  1. Savoca, McInturf & Hazen. Plastic ingestion by marine fish is widespread and increasing. Global Change Biology, 2021. doi
  2. Savoca et al. Marine plastic debris emits a keystone infochemical for olfactory foraging seabirds. Science Advances, 2016. doi
  3. Savoca et al. Odours from marine plastic debris induce food search behaviours in a forage fish. Proc. Royal Society B, 2017. doi
  4. Schuyler et al. Mistaken identity? Visual similarities of marine debris to natural prey items of sea turtles. BMC Ecology, 2014. doi
  5. Wilcox et al. A quantitative analysis linking sea turtle mortality and plastic debris ingestion. Scientific Reports, 2018. A population-level estimate, not a threshold for one animal. doi
  6. Lau et al. Evaluating scenarios toward zero plastic pollution. Science, 2020. 11 Mt (range 9 to 14) entering aquatic environments in 2016. doi
  7. Cottom et al. A local-to-global emissions inventory of macroplastic pollution. Nature, 2024. India 9.3 Mt of 52 Mt worldwide, including open burning. doi
  8. UNEP, Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution, status as of October 2026. unep.org
  9. Plastic Waste Management (Amendment) Rules, 2021, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. pib.gov.in

Made by Shardul Nandedkar at Aakar Labs. Everything you see is drawn live in your browser; no fish were filmed.