Introduction

Perspectives on coastal pollution vary with the observer, but the average newspaper-reading, television-watching citizen has concerns about the subject that can be aggregated into three general categories:

1. Fear of consuming seafood products that may be contaminated 2. Disgust with environmental encounters in degraded coastal areas 3. Unease about the world’s food base — about global losses in abundance

of many living marine resources

I have a true story (the next vignette) about a pollution-associated incident that illustrates one person’s awakening to the realities of degraded environments.