The ball goes long, 5 sets of barefooted feet approach it’s landing point from different directions, the quickest one is tackled and the ball bounces free, it is picked up and send back into the opponents half by the next arrival. The game has been going on for hours, with players substituting as others tire, but the pace of the game has never lessened. Sweat pores from the players, t-shirts are discarded and yelling for the ball is continuous. The game began on the sand flats exposed at low tide. A hard, smooth and expansive playing field to begin with, but the surface rapidly degraded into a pit-holed, uneven, ankle twisting dream. Slowly the tide is rising into the playing field and covering over the goal posts at each end. However, as each wave retreats a new area of perfectly flat sand provides the opportunity for a break-away goal, but is also bring another challenge to the game.

With each surge, the ocean seems to be trying to push all the garbage out of her waters and back onto the beach. With every wave, a new deposit is made. The players wander back through this mess, kicking at the occasional plastic drinking container but never stopping. The line of plastic trash in their “field” increases and the game slowly ends. As the game ends, the last few players walk through the plastic drinking bottles, run over deposited plastic bags, and chip the ball over blocks of Styrofoam. No one seems to notice the garbage for anything else other than a “natural” obstacle while playing beach soccer…

While watching the game, I was stuck by the fact that as each player tired and walked off the “field” he would inevitably wander over a piece of garbage, step on it and keep walking… it was as though the feeling of plastic underfoot was as natural as sea sand. In some places on earth, that piece of plastic would have been regarded as foreign and perhaps the player would have picked it up and thrown it in the garbage. But no-one noticed here…

Why ? Looking up and down the beach, it became extremely apparent where the high tide line was, not by the level of algal growth on the rocks, nor by a trail of seaweed, but by a thick distinct line of ocean and beach pollution that demarcated the boundary. The areas in front of beach cafes held higher levels of cans, bottles and chip packets. The small stream at the end of the beach washed over half-buried bottles, bags and nets.

We have come across this sort of situation before but this time while I sat on the beach, watching Hugh surf, I was struck by the fact that no-one noticed. Since when did a polluted beach become a normal beach? Since when did we begin to expect that our beaches would have garbage on them? Since when did expect to step on trash while at the beach instead of sand? Since when did we stop caring?

I wondered if one of the younger generation of soccer players really knew any different. Having grown up with only polluted beaches as a reference point, where does his base-line for a normal beach stand? If the beach became increasing more polluted, would it be noticed more readily than if the beach returned to its natural state with no plastic intermingled with the sand, no bags clogging the shore break, no beer cans littered about ? Would be more readily commented on if his beach was clean than if it was dirty?

Thinking about this, I began to wonder about us all. How much have our own personal base-lines for pollution acceptance shifted ? At what deteriorated state do we now consider a beach to be normal ? Through this trip, we have been able to access some of the most pristine beaches on our planet, but still I am more amazed when we find a clean one that a dirty one. People travel great distances to see the most beautiful beaches on the planet and take great care not to pollute on these beaches, but for some reason to do see any issue with polluting at their own beach. Why ?