'Fish' to highlight plight of coastal pollution

It is made of plastic trash of leading commercial brands that washed up on shores

In a fitting contribution to the International Convention on Biodiversity COP-11, set to begin at Hyderabad from Monday, British artist Silas Birtwistle has sculpted a 3 metre-long, 1.5 metre-tall colorful fish out of plastic trash, which will be greeting participants at the venue. 

“It is a symbol of the impact of terrestrial activities on sea and rivers. Actually it’s the youth from coastal communities around the world who sent me to make the sculpture,” Silas said.

Garbage art

The garbage art became possible through the involvement of about 35 young people including few from Hyderabad.

Silas and his brother Adam, also an artist and collaborator, worked along to make the colorful fish which is made out of plastic waste emanating from several commercial brands which washed up the shores around the world.

The fish stands on a pivot and moves along with the direction of the wind. However Silas is not yet sure where the fish will be finally displayed. “It may go to the Worldwide Fund for Nature or Wildlife Institute of India,” he said.

 “The shores include countries like Philippines, Tasmania, Belize, Costa Rica and Canada,” Silas told the media on Friday at a COP-related event.

Several contributors are actually fishermen who want me to highlight the life in coastline,” Silas said.

“For a common man there may not be much change in the way oceans look today. They may not understand issues like acidification of oceans, but my trash based fish will nail the point,” says Silas.

For the previous CoP 10 at Nagoya, Japan, Silas put together a conference table made out of driftwood and 12 chairs and the set was used at the conference.

Later, it travelled to other venues and meetings. For the theme, wood was collected from the coasts of East Africa, Borneo, Honduras and Canada. The project is now available on his website.

Biodiversity

The status of biodiversity in the world’s oceans will also be highlighted in the COP-11.
A report on ecologically or biologically significant marine areas (EBSAs) will be presented.
 Discussions on various other threats to marine biodiversity will also take place, including ocean acidification, marine debris, coral bleaching and underwater noise.
It  will feed into the broader international work on oceans, including the recent Rio+20 outcome.