A Landscape of Illusions

everything is simpler
since plastic flows
in our veins

less visible or troublesome
more commonplace
the cataract of the heart
which we take in
with mother's milk
— Szymon Kantorski (trans. Barbara Jóźwiak)

Marine litter is easy. Colourful, yet — in its essence — wonderfully black and white. Stranded along otherwise pristine Arctic shores, it is distinct from nature, always ugly, always bad. It is a quantifiable phenomenon causing demonstrable harm, which can be articulated mathematically, viewed against clearly drawn threshold values, laid out in neat grids. Or so it appears.

Over time, natural processes not only bleach the colour out of stranded litter items, but also seriously blur the line between what has never in fact been truly black and white. They work the litter into the delicate fabric of the Arctic, making the artificial indistinguishable, inseparable from the natural.

UV-bleached scraps of plastic film and crumpled PET bottles become indistinct from translucent strands of drying seaweed. Degraded pieces of synthetic foam perfectly mimic stranded sea sponges. Yellowed fragments of plastic containers pose as scattered animal bones. Tangles of strapping bands masquerade as messy heaps of algae from the deep sea. And, more confusingly still, the deception works both ways. Marine litter stops being a glaring discontinuity in Arctic aesthetics. Assuming the beauty — or the ugliness — of the natural features of Arctic scenery, it undermines its authenticity, turning the genuine landscape into one of pretence, while still remaining a foreign body, with all its potential impacts.

And so it turns out that marine litter is not that easy after all. Not as distinct from nature as it may seem. But it is harmful (and therefore bad) in more ways that we normally give it credit for, so while it may present certain identification difficulties, it still poses no ethical dilemmas. We can go on loathing it, and with more passion than ever. Until, that is, we have another careful look around.

Not all marine litter blends in. Much of it remains plain to see, often creating eyesores in the otherwise magnificent landscape. Often, but not invariably. Marked by the patina of time, marine litter has curious, perverse aesthetics of its own. It tarnishes the beauty of the Arctic, but also contributes to it in unexpected ways. It strangles life, but also nurtures it. It becomes inextricably woven into the tapestry of the ecosystem, and yes — when given enough thought — it does pose questions of ethics. To remove it or to leave it be? To undo one kind of damage by inflicting another, or to accept that no damage can be truly undone? To clean or to find other outlets for good intentions and energy?

The forScience team roam remote beaches of the Arctic, removing the vast majority of litter, leaving some, pondering the problem of pollution, collecting litter data, wondering how much sense it makes, facing ethical decisions more often than expected. Because whatever our own findings (and the rest of litter science) may suggest, marine litter is anything but easy. It is just that much of its complexity cannot be counted and is therefore lost when translated into the numerical language of science.

Photographs and reflections captured by Anita Horowska and Barbara Jóźwiak, forScience Foundation, during fieldwork conducted in Sørkapp Land, Svalbard, in the summer of 2024 under project ICEBERG.