Imagine 20000 baseball cards floating deep under the ocean waves. How did they end up on the seafloor? Let’s think through a scenario of how this could have occurred.
It was a sunny summer day at the coast and young Timmy had brought all of his prized baseball card collection to show his friends at the beach. He had been collecting for years and had amassed over 20000 cards stored carefully in plastic sleeves within many large baseball card binders. As the kids played in the surf, one of Timmy’s friends accidentally knocked over the stack of binders, sending them tumbling into the ocean waves.
Timmy desperately tried to retrieve the binders but the current was too strong. He watched in horror as the binders, still intact but filling with water, were swept out into the sea. Sobbing, Timmy realized his collection was now lost to the depths of the ocean. For weeks he kept hoping some cards may wash back ashore but none ever did. It seemed his collection was truly gone.
Unbeknownst to Timmy, his beloved cards had started on an incredible underwater journey. As the binders sunk lower and lower, the pressure of the water caused them to break apart, scattering the individual plastic card sleeves in all directions. Currents swirling around shipwrecks, coral formations, and other underwater structures helped to separate and distribute the cards even further. Bioluminescent creatures like jellyfish and shrimp encountered the strange plastic flecks in the darkness and avoided them.
Small fish mistook some of the floating card sleeves for food but were unable to digest the tough material. As schools of fish migrated, they unwittingly transported cards to new areas on the seafloor. Other cards settled in sandy areas, occasionally getting stirred up by crabs, lobsters, or bottom-feeding fish before resettling elsewhere. Within days, Timmy’s collection had become spread out over hundreds of square miles of ocean bottom.
As months passed, a thin layer of sediment began to cover the cards. Nutrients and microorganisms in the surrounding seawater started to colonize the surfaces. Algae and bacteria thrived on the plastic material. Tiny crustaceans like amphipods found the flat cards made excellent shelter. They nibbled away the algal growth to maintain their hiding spots.
Over a year, the once pristine cards became coated and encrusted. The vibrant colors faded under the influence of suspended particles and UV rays filtering down from above. Only the hardiest corners and edges remained intact, with centers completely worn away. Fish had nibbled circular bites out of some cards. Others had triangular tears where curious crabs had tried to pick them up.
Other cards met worse fates. Those trapped under boulders or in trenches became buried deeper over time. The thick sediment completely obscured any traces of what lay beneath. A few cards ended up inside the feeding tentacles of bottom-dwelling anemones or got caught in mollusk shells. The acidic stomachs of certain animals fully dissolved select cards, breaking them down into unrecognizable microplastic fragments indistinguishable from other detritus on the seafloor.
By now several years had passed. Timmy was in high school and had long since moved on from his childhood card collection. But out in the deepest reaches of the ocean, remnants of those cherished cards still endured, battered and transformed. Mini marine ecosystems now thrived upon the hardy sleeves. Ghostly cardboard shadows remained of long-faded sports heroes. Timmy’s lost collection, though unrecognizable, had become an accidental artificial reef colonized by countless invertebrates and microbes. His cards, plunged to watery graves, took on new permanence within the silent depths of the sea.
While Timmy may never know the final fate of his collection, his cards live on, incorporated into the rich tapestry of life on the ocean floor. Through persistence and adaptation, natureclaimed the remnants of a boy’s beloved pastime, preserving an unexpected shelf life far longerthan their intended usage atop land. Down in the murky ocean shadows, a small part of Timmy’s childhood memories persist, embedded within bustling communities of creaturse he’ll never see but who call those cards their unchanging homes.
