Life Line

Wade Hughes · Issue 67, Jul/Aug 2012 · pp. 75–77

It is a rope made from the same plastic used for the manufacture of rice sacks. Seen from a different perspective, it is, perhaps, a clue to the prospects for survival of biodiversity in the sea. It arcs downwards under the press of the tide, from a marker buoy on the surface, to a massive concrete block on the seabed, 37 metres below. Here, in mid channel between the island of Misool and the rocky islet of Ketimkerio in the Raja Ampat archipelago of Western Papua, it serves as mooring line for boats servicing the Misool eco resort. If the rope was not here, this would be open water. Elswehere, in the near vicinity other mooring lines woven from different plastic polymers, are only thinly smeared with green algae. But because this particular rope is here, and, serendipitously woven from material conducive to marine colonization, the blank blue space of open water is etched by a line of p…