Guest speakers, McMurray students address ocean pollution

Published 1:30 am Wednesday, April 27, 2016

In honor of Earth Day, McMurray Middle School Executive Council students and their advisors brought multiple guests to Vashon, including filmmaker and adventurer Alison Teal, to speak about plastic pollution in the Earth’s oceans.

Teal was joined by a representative from Seattle’s Nube9, a company that makes clothing from plastic bottles, and by the regional director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Friday at McMurray Middle School to talk to the students about plastic in the Earth’s oceans. Teal talked about how she came face-to-face with the pollution while on Discovery Channel’s show Naked and Afraid. That night, she came to Vashon High School for a public screening of her documentary about the issue: “One Person’s Trash is Another Woman’s Bikini.”

Roughly 35 people sat in the high school theater and watched Teal’s quirky way of taking on the serious issue. The documentary revealed footage from her Naked and Afraid filming in the Maldives and the immeasurable amount of plastic that had washed up on what is normally seen as pristine beach. The film resonated with McMurray Executive Council member Zach Van Dusen, who said he and his classmates had been learning about waste and how long it takes to biodegrade.

“We did trivia about how long stuff lasts before it biodegrades, and that shocked us,” he said. “There’s garbage patches (in the ocean) the size of Texas. It’s crazy. And then there’s so much stuff underwater you can’t see.”

That lesson and a suggestion from Executive Council advisor Gates Johnson led the council to launch the Sea the Change event as one of its global initiatives. Teal’s assembly, public screening and a beach cleanup at Point Robinson on Sunday rounded out the kickoff of the initiative, but the students’ efforts to clean the world’s oceans will continue with a 28-day plastic purge. Visit the student-created website seathechange.us for more.