Kayla Stafinbil (b. 1995, Sacramento, CA, USA)

All You Never Eat Sushi, 2019

Plastic sushi, resin 4’ H x 8’ W

The global demand for seafood is increasing while the available resources are dramatically decreasing1. For over a decade, multiple scientific publications have predicted that the world would run out of wild-caught seafood by 20482. The studies state that the decline in marine biodiversity is a result of overfishing, pollution and other environmental factors, such as rising ocean temperatures, that are reducing the population of fishes while at the same time the ecosystems are being destroyed.

According to a Food and Agriculture Organization estimate, over 70% of the world’s fish species are either fully exploited or depleted today.

I believe that fishing practices and mindless consumption are not the only culprits to blame; I believe that our usage of plastic is a major killer of ocean life as well. We use plastic for everything, from what we wrap our food in to parts in our cars and most of it is not recycled. Plastic is not easily recycled despite cities’ best efforts and approximately

12.7 million tons make its way into our oceans each year3. All that plastic does not degrade down into harmless particulates but destroys ocean life by creating toxic ecosystems and polluting food sources.

With All You Can Never Eat Sushi, I want to call attention to the ecological burden we have placed on our oceans. We have surrounded ocean life with plastic, and they have come to ingest it as well. Our plastic reliance is so bad that we ironically rely on plastic to showcase what is the very fish we are destroying. Although our governments are slowly creating litigation in an attempt to curb our plastic waste, it will be too-little¬-too- late unless we all make the effort to make a stand against plastic.

1 https://phys.org/news/2018-09-fish-consume-global-seafood-consumption.html

2 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2006/11/seafood-biodiversity/

3 http://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/quick-questions/how-much-plastic-is-in-the-ocean.html