I used to love this beach. The way the wild waves hit the rocks at high tide, roaring like a lion only to retreat like a purring pussycat when the wind fell and the moon pulled the water back. That was my favourite time: a calm low tide; when the water retreated with a sigh, revealing an alien world. Pools full of creeping snails; bug-eyed Goby fish; anemones waving their tentacles in the tepid water. Scuttling crabs. I loved them most. Their sharp, grabbing claws; their beady, alien eyes; their rock-hard carapace. I spent hours down here, catching crabs as a kid; trying bits of ham to some string and luring them out from under the jetty. I never got bored of watching them scuttle back to the water when I let them go; burrowing into the sand. They seemed invincible. They weren't.

A swell out to sea picks up a mass of detritus and vomits it onto the beach. There are bottles, and bags; old nets and dead animals.

I nudge a large brown crab with my foot. It's long dead, and its decomposed claw comes away. It wouldn't have been edible anyway. Bioaccumulation, they call it. All that plastic, slowly releasing invisible particles into the sea. I remember learning about it at school back when no one paid attention. Back when plastic and climate change were economic inconveniences that were best ignored. A problem for future generations. 

Mine. 

No one knew then, about the bioaccumulation; about how those microparticles get into the algae and the plants; get concentrated as the herbivores eat the plants.  By the time the carnivores eat the herbivores, the levels of plastic microparticles can be toxic. 

The sea disgorges another glut of dead creatures – including a staring, bedraggled Herring Gull.  One crab probably didn't kill it, but a hundred? A thousand? It's whole diet a toxic, unavoidable time bomb.

"Grandad, " calls my Grandson Joe as my daughter lands the boat on a patch of plastic-strewn shingle.. "Grandad, look what I've found." 

He jumps recklessly onto the shore, oblivious to just what a precious miracle he is, conceived and born naturally in this age of failed In Vitro fertilisation and dwindling population.

"Look, " he exclaims excitedly, holding up a jar full of dirty water. In it floats an ancient plastic earcleaner, and clinging onto it for dear life, a tiny Seahorse.  "Can I eat him?" asks Joe, his hungry eyes full of hope.

I shake my head.

They say the plastic is in everything, now. Nothing's safe to eat. Nothing affordable anyway. The corporations grow their microponic crops using purified water.  They sell them to the rich along with promises of increased success in the IVF programme. 

I put an arm around Joe's scrawny shoulder and steer him back to the boat. "Let's try and find him a patch of algae and girlfriend," I say as my daughter starts the engine. "Us survivors need to help each other."