Over the winter we had some terrible storms. During this time I had been reading about 'shifting baseline syndrome', which refers to a 'continuous lowering of standards and acceptance of degraded natural ecosystems'*, measured from a baseline set by each generation of observation.

I thought about how this would apply to our beaches. I see the beach, I see it littered with plastic and rubbish – yet my kids see the beach simply as a beach. They see the detritus but this has become their normal, this is how a beach looks within their generation. Beach cleans and picking up plastic waste go hand in hand with the sea. Within the bay, amongst the tangle of seaweed, plastic and detritus, they still see beauty. With the acceptance of each generation resetting the baseline, we slowly lose sight of the original environment and what we have truly lost.

*(Wilding', Isabella Tree)